Bradley Stoke now has a second late-night, seven-days-a-week, chemist after the ‘Bradley Stoke Pharmacy’ opened last Monday on the Bradley Stoke Surgery site in Brook Way.
The new chemist, which is located remarkably close to the existing Lloyds pharmacy near Aldi, opens for 100 hours a week, enabling it to exploit a “loophole” in the law that avoids it needing to prove to the local health authority that it is “necessary and expedient”.
The news, announced in a low-key manner on the Bradley Stoke Surgery website, comes just seven months after Boots opened its ‘Midnight Pharmacy’, operating under the same 100-hour legislation, at its Willow Brook Centre store.
The town’s fourth pharmacy operates within the Tesco Extra store, also at the Willow Brook Centre.
A statement in the September edition of the Friends of Bradley Stoke Surgery newsletter reads:
“Work began at the end of August to create Bradley Stoke Pharmacy adjacent to the surgery which will enable patients to make one journey to see the doctor and collect their prescriptions at the same time.”
“We are delighted that this new initiative is going ahead which will provide even better services and be more convenient for patients.”
Staff at the new pharmacy told The Journal that it was operated independently of the Surgery. The company behind it, ‘Bradley Stoke Pharmacy Ltd’, has no other outlets, they added.
The rooms occupied by the new pharmacy, added during the Surgery’s expansion in 2010, were originally earmarked to be used as ‘clinical space’ but a planning application made in October 2010 successfully obtained permission to change the usage to ‘a 100-hour opening pharmacy’.
Opening hours at the new pharmacy are:
- Monday to Friday: 7am to 11pm
- Saturday: 8am to 8pm
- Sunday: 10am to 6pm
There could still be developments in the pipeline as NHS South Gloucestershire told The Journal in November 2010 that it was aware of three applications for 100-hour pharmacies in the Bradley Stoke area.
Related link: Pharmacies in Bradley Stoke (The Journal)
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If they’re independent from the surgery, why are the surgery advertising and promoting it? Surely that’s not legal considering they do not advertise any other pharmacy’s and its funded by the NHS.
And I wonder who sits behind “Bradley Stoke Pharmacy Ltd”……