Request

You asked us: I would like to request a list of all community pharmacies in England that have permanently ceased (closed) providing NHS pharmaceutical services over the past 10 years, or for as far back as your records allow. Specifically, I would like the following information for each pharmacy that has closed:

- Pharmacy name
- Full address
- Postcode
- Date of closure (if available)
The NHS Business Services Authority (NHSBSA) received your request on 19 June 2025.

We have handled your request under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) 2000.

Our response

Please note that the NHSBSA does not hold a definite indicator for closed pharmacies. ODS (dispenser) codes represent a contract rather than a particular pharmacy store. They can close and reopen for multiple reasons including changes of ownership where the pharmacy may have continued trading under a different ODS code/contract.

We have supplied data on ceased contracts, which may include pharmacies which simply changed hands/ownership, but the business remained open.

Please read the below notes to ensure correct understanding of the data.

NHS Prescription Services process prescriptions for Pharmacy Contractors, Appliance Contractors, Dispensing Doctors and Personal Administration with information then used to make payments to pharmacists and appliance contractors in England for prescriptions dispensed in primary care settings (other arrangements are in place for making payments to Dispensing Doctors and Personal Administration). This involves processing over 1 billion prescription items and payments totalling over £9 billion each year. The information gathered from this process is then used to provide information on costs and trends in prescribing in England and Wales to over 25,000 registered NHS and Department of Health and Social Care users.

Data Source

The data source was the NHSBSA Information Services Data Warehouse.

Time Period

Data in our database is available from January 2014. The latest information held for each contractor has been provided.

Organisation Data

The data provided is for English Pharmacy contracts which are closed as of the records in our organisational database. We have limited to accounts who dispensed at least one NHS prescription from January 2014 (as far back as our data goes) to avoid counting accounts which did not provide any NHS pharmaceutical service.

For additional context for the number of active pharmacies at any given point other datasets are available at
https://opendata.nhsbsa.net/dataset/consolidated-pharmaceutical-list
https://opendata.nhsbsa.net/dataset/contractor-details
https://opendata.nhsbsa.net/dataset/pharmacy-openings-and-closures

You may also be interested in https://www.odsdatasearchandexport.nhs.uk/

or the dispensary data here https://digital.nhs.uk/services/organisation-data-service/data-search-and-export/csv-downloads/gp-and-gp-practice-related-data which includes open and closed dates.

Data Queries

Please contact foirequests@nhsbsa.nhs.uk ensuring you quote the above reference if you have any specific questions regarding this response; or, if you feel you may be misunderstanding or misinterpreting the information; or, if you plan on publishing the data. Reusing the data and copyright

If you plan on producing a press or broadcast story based upon the data please contact communicationsteam@nhsbsa.nhs.uk. This is important to ensure that the figures are not misunderstood or misrepresented.

The information supplied to you continues to be protected by the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 and is subject to NHSBSA copyright. This information is licenced under the terms of the Open Government Licence detailed at:

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/

Should you wish to re-use the information you must include the following statement: “Data Warehouse, NHSBSA Copyright 2025”. Failure to do so is a breach of the terms of the licence.

Information you receive which is not subject to NHSBSA Copyright continues to be protected by the copyright of the person, or organisation, from which the information originated. Please obtain their permission before reproducing any third party (non NHSBSA Copyright) information.