A looming cliff edge of spiralling costs imposed by the government, including business rate rises and minimum wage increases, is due to hit pharmacies in April on top of historic funding cuts.

Owners representing one in three pharmacies in England - serving an estimated 15.5 million patients - have collectively written to the health secretary to warn him that pharmacies 'are at real risk of imminent closure due to intolerable financial pressures… blowing an enormous hole in the 10-Year Plan before it has even begun'.

As ministers consider their 2026 funding offer to pharmacies the letter urged Streeting to ‘keep [his] promise to stabilise pharmacy funding so we can deliver for the NHS'.

The letter went on to say that the ‘ambition to reform the NHS to bring care closer to communities is what we have devoted our careers to' but that ‘too many of us are left taking out loans, maximising overdrafts and raiding pensions that we have spent our working lives building to keep our pharmacies afloat.'

The letter comes as a new survey by the National Pharmacy Association (NPA) found that at least 65% of pharmacies in England operated at a loss in 2025, leaving them at heightened risk. Pharmacy closures have continued at the rate of over one a week last year despite receiving the first funding rise in years.

In addition, 95% of pharmacies told the NPA that they were not in a financial position to be able to support the government's ambitions to move care into the community as outlined in the 10-Year Plan.

Meanwhile, analysis of latest closure numbers broken down by local authority area and weighted by population has found that:

• Deprived areas with high health needs saw the highest rates of pharmacy closures between 2022-2025, with Liverpool being the nations capital for pharmacy closures per head of population, followed by Blackpool, Coventry and Hull.
• The pharmacy network in England now stands at its smallest since 2006, with West Berkshire being the nation's pharmacy desert, with over four times fewer pharmacies per head of population than Westminster, the area with the highest.

Olivier Picard, chair of the National Pharmacy Association, said: ‘As people at the very front line of the neighbourhood NHS we want to deliver on the government's ambitions for health and give more services to patients to take pressure away from the rest of the NHS family.

‘But Wes Streeting's plans to bring care to communities won't happen if he allows pharmacies to continue closing and those that remain are propped up by pharmacy owners remortgaging their own homes or raiding pension pots.

‘We took a step forward last year and we want Wes Streeting to honour his promise to thousands of pharmacies to provide us with the stability we need to invest in the future.'