Patients in Wellington have struggled to access pharmacy services in the town, with the closure of the Boots pharmacy within Wellington Medical Centre in 2024 and the loss of the Jhoots branch on Mantle Street the following year.
The Allied Pharmacy opened in the former Jhoots outlet in early-March, bringing the town back to three pharmacies in total – with the prospect of a fourth opening on the Westpark 26 business park in the near-future.
But health bosses have declined to urgently order any further provision in the area – and had to formally delay further discussions to the autumn after not enough board members showed up for a decision to be legally binding.
Roger Tozer, lead campaigner at the Wellington Pharmacy Action Group, raised the issue in a written question before the Somerset health board met in Taunton on Tuesday morning (June 30).
Mr Tozer said that there has been a sharp rise in online, mail-order prescriptions since the two closures, resulting in “prescription leakage” – where patients seek medicine out of their primary care network area, making it harder to track who is being treated where (and thereby follow up with patients).
The level of leakage had “vertically surged” from just under 39 per cent in 2023 to “a definitive tipping point” of just over 60 per cent in early-2026.
Mr Tozer said: “This shifts the vast majority of Wellington’s pharmaceutical care completely away from face-to-face clinical access, rendering national primary care frameworks like ‘Pharmacy First’ functionally inaccessible to over half of our local population.
“These verified metrics expose a profound, real-time breakdown in local high street capacity.”
The NHS prepares a pharmaceutical needs assessment every few years, which assesses which areas require additional pharmacy provision (whether in terms of new stores opening, or existing stores staying open for longer to handle high levels of demand).
Allied Pharmacies has taken over the former Jhoots pharmacy in Wellington (Image: Contributed)
Mr Tozer called on the board to issue a “supplementary statement”, identifying the need for additional face-to-face services, since the current assessment is not expected to be reviewed again until 2028.
Fellow campaigner Alison Green added: “As a local resident, I am directly experiencing the fallout of this capacity crisis through longer queues, delays and a lack of face-to-face community access.
“Given that the current assessment still has two years to run, will the board protect Wellington residents by using its legal powers to issue an immediate supplementary statement acknowledging a critical deficit in our physical high street pharmacy provision, rather than making us wait until 2028 for action?”
Yvonne Lamb, operations manager at Community Pharmacy Somerset, confirmed that the fourth planned pharmacy in Wellington was “going to an appeal” – with the website for this location (dubbed ‘Somerset Meds’) currently showing an ‘under construction’ message.
Dr Orla Dunn, Somerset Council‘s public health consultant, added: “A supplementary statement cannot make an assessment of a deficit or a gap in provision. Legally, we cannot issue such an assessment in the way that the action group requests.
Yvonne Lamb, operations manager at Community Pharmacy Somerset (Image: Daniel Mumby)
“In response to the point about Pharmacy First access, I would take this opportunity to state that anybody not able to consult Pharmacy First can also contact 111 for primary care advice.”
The board was originally due to discuss the wider pharmaceutical needs assessment at the same meeting; however, because too few members were able to physically attend, the board was inquorate (meaning it could not make legally binding decisions).
As such, a discussion of this assessment was delayed until its next meeting, which is scheduled to be held in Taunton on September 29.