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Nearly half (45%) of pharmacy owners in England have relied on personal savings or remortgaged their homes in the past year to subsidise their pharmacy, according to results of a survey conducted by Community Pharmacy England (CPE).
CPE’s ‘Pharmacy Pressures Survey 2025’, carried out between January and March 2025, also found that of the 800 pharmacy owner respondents — representing 4,300 pharmacy premises — 37% were unable to pay wholesaler bills on time for prescription medication supplies.
Following the announcement of the new community pharmacy funding deal in April 2025, the negotiator conducted a follow-up poll, which revealed that 24% of pharmacy owners said they still expected to have to invest personal savings into their business to continue delivering NHS services.
Of the 300 pharmacy owners and head office officials — representing 3,517 pharmacies in England and around 34% of the network — polled by CPE on 16–30 April 2024, after the new settlement was announced:
- 59% said they still expected to reduce staff headcount in 2025;
- 64% owners said they would be unable to answer phone calls;
- 51% said they would have to reduce opening hours; and
- 32% said they would have to take out emergency funding.
The findings were published in CPE’s ‘Pressures survey 2025 funding and profitability report’ on 27 August 2025.
Janet Morrison, chief executive of CPE, said the survey “reveals a deeply concerning trend of pharmacy owners fighting to keep their business afloat and facing disastrous personal financial situations as a consequence”.
“Despite a very welcome funding uplift this April [2025], our latest polling results from that month show that the pressures are ongoing. This remains a frightening time for very many pharmacy owners, who have put their personal financial situations on the line to keep serving their patients and local communities, and we can expect to see further steps taken by pharmacies to survive, with an inevitable and negative impact on patients and other primary care providers,” she added.
On average, around 90% of community pharmacy activity relates to NHS services.
Morrison’s comments come as the government prepares to enter discussions with the sector about its next funding settlement, following on from the 2025/2026 deal announced in April 2025.
However, for 94% of pharmacies, the settlement agreed in April 2025 did not bring financial stability, according to a poll by the National Pharmacy Association (NPA) of pharmacy owners, representing 600 independent pharmacies in July 2025.
In addition, 63% of respondents said they thought they may have to close their pharmacy or pharmacies for good within the next 12 months without additional financial support from the government.
Anil Sharma, independent community pharmacy owner in the east of England, said he operates “a night-shift pattern” in the pharmacies he owns together with his wife.
“One of us is in the pharmacy late at night, while the other is home with the children, and the other then starts in the early hours of the morning,” she said.
“It’s exhausting: we can barely have any sort of a personal or family life. And that’s before you consider the financial worries — the wondering every month if we will be paid enough to cover our wholesaler bills; the concern that if another burned out member of staff leaves it will take us months and months to recruit again; and the lack of clarity about the longer term future, as we only have a one-year funding settlement.”
Mike Hewitson, independent community pharmacy owner in the south of England, said: “I run two pharmacies and I’ve been forced to make tough decisions about reducing our opening hours or cutting staff numbers.
“I often receive late night messages from fellow pharmacy owners in despair — it’s frightening, and they just don’t know what to do anymore. Dedicated healthcare professionals should not have been put in this position.”
Henry Gregg, chief executive of the NPA, commented: “No NHS service should be being propped up by the personal savings or mortgages of the individuals running it.
“The NHS ten-year plan is an historic opportunity to finally shift care into communities and expand the role of community pharmacy in a way we have never seen before. However, this cannot be done whilst pharmacies are unable to pay their bills and keep their doors open.
“To fully realise this massive opportunity and revolutionise care for patients, we need additional funding to stabilise the pharmacy network and allow pharmacies to invest in new services.”
A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Social Care responded: “Community pharmacists are at the heart of local healthcare, and we’re working to turn around a decade of underfunding and neglect that has left the sector on the brink of collapse.
“We want them to play a bigger role as we shift care out of hospitals and into the community through our Plan for Change.
“This year, we increased funding to community pharmacies to almost £3.1bn — representing the largest uplift in funding of any part of the NHS for 2025/2026 — providing patients with more services closer to home and freeing up GP appointments.”
