The national picture
The NHSBSA publishes a monthly count of pharmacies in England that are on a Pharmaceutical List held by NHS England — meaning they can dispense NHS prescriptions and provide pharmaceutical services. That count has fallen almost every month for five years.
The decline is steady rather than a single cliff-edge: the network lost pharmacies in most months across 2023, 2024 and 2025. Over the whole period the NHSBSA recorded 2,811 openings and 3,568 closures (excluding distance sellers). That gross closure figure overstates how many communities lost a pharmacy, because NHSBSA counts a change of ownership as a closure plus a next-day reopening — so the honest headline is the net loss of 815 sites.
It is the big chains that are shrinking
NHSBSA groups pharmacies by the number of premises in each ownership group: small (1–5 branches), medium (6–99) and large (100+). Splitting the numbers this way reveals what is actually happening: the large multiples have contracted sharply while small independents have grown.
| Pharmacy group size | Jan 2021 | May 2026 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Small groups (1–5 branches) | 4,024 | 5,075 | +1,051 |
| Medium groups (6–99 branches) | 1,593 | 1,705 | +112 |
| Large groups (100+ branches) | 5,220 | 3,153 | −2,067 |
| Of which: 100-hour pharmacies | 1,096 | 785 | −311 |
| Distance-selling (online) | 369 | 458 | +89 |
These are counts of premises grouped by their owner's size, not the size of an individual shop. The near-2,100 fall in the "large group" line is consistent with the widely-reported contraction and break-up of the biggest pharmacy chains over this period, with many branches either closing or being sold on to smaller operators (which then move into the small- and medium-group columns). Either way, the total network is smaller than it was.
Portsmouth and the PO postcodes
NHSBSA publishes the openings-and-closures series for England as a whole, not by town, so a genuine local closure trend for Portsmouth cannot be read off that dataset. What we can do honestly is count pharmacies on the published pharmaceutical list for the Portsmouth area at two points in time, using NHSBSA's quarterly Consolidated Pharmaceutical List.
| Area (register count) | Sept 2022 | Mar 2026 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Portsmouth (Health & Wellbeing Board area) | 39 | 33 | −6 |
| All PO postcodes (Portsmouth & south-east Hampshire) | 161 | 145 | −16 |
| Southampton (HWB area) | 40 | 38 | −2 |
| Hampshire (HWB area) | 232 | 219 | −13 |
| England (whole register) | 11,186 | 10,492 | −694 |
Portsmouth city has gone from 39 to 33 pharmacies on the list — a loss of six, or roughly one in six — while the wider PO postcode area (which also covers Havant, Fareham, Gosport and parts of the coast) is down 16. The England register total on this measure fell by 694 over the same window, so Portsmouth's rate of loss is broadly in line with the national trend rather than an outlier.
A caveat on these local numbers: the Consolidated Pharmaceutical List counts community pharmacies alongside appliance contractors and local pharmaceutical services contractors, so it is a slightly different measure from the England headline count above and the two totals will not match exactly. The direction of travel — down — is the same on both.
MediWatch is building tools that help patients find which local pharmacies can supply a medicine that is in short supply — and help pharmacies handle the resulting demand. If you run a pharmacy in the PO area and want to be part of that, we would like to hear from you.
MediWatch for pharmaciesWhy this matters for patients
A shrinking pharmacy network makes every medicine shortage bite harder. When a drug is in short supply, patients often have to ring round several pharmacies to find stock — and there are now several hundred fewer to ring. Longer distances and longer queues also make it harder to collect repeat prescriptions on time.
If you are affected, these MediWatch guides can help:
- How to switch pharmacies
- What to do when your medicine is out of stock
- Getting an emergency prescription
- Medicine shortages in Portsmouth
MediWatch monitors live UK medicine shortages and can email you when a medicine you rely on goes into — or comes out of — shortage.
See current UK shortagesMethod & honesty notes
What the data is. The national trend uses NHSBSA's Pharmacy Openings and Closures dataset: a monthly count of pharmacies in England on an NHS England Pharmaceutical List. NHSBSA classifies it as management information — not an official statistic, and it covers England only. The local counts use NHSBSA's quarterly Consolidated Pharmaceutical List.
What we did. We downloaded the latest openings-and-closures file (to May 2026) and the earliest (Sept 2022) and latest (March 2026) consolidated lists directly from the NHSBSA open data portal, then counted pharmacies nationally and by area. The code and cached data are reproducible; the derived figures are published as JSON alongside this page.
What we did not do. We have not adjusted for population, estimated any missing months, or attributed closures to any named company. Ownership changes are counted by NHSBSA as a closure plus a reopening, so we lead with net change, not gross closures. MediWatch is an independent service and is not affiliated with the NHS or NHSBSA.
NHS Business Services Authority, Pharmacy Openings and Closures (England, monthly; accessed 17 July 2026).
NHS Business Services Authority, Consolidated Pharmaceutical List (quarterly; accessed 17 July 2026).
Further reading: Community Pharmacy England — medicine supply · NHS find a pharmacy.
Pharmacy data © Crown copyright, reused under the terms of the NHSBSA open data licence with attribution.