25/03/2026
Easter is coming! Please read to the end.
If you think you will need your prescription before Easter please order it with your surgery today or tomorrow at the latest. This coming week is often the busiest of the year with the surgeries closed for 4 days and we will have a lot of extra prescriptions to dispense during that week, so we ask you give yourselves plenty of time to order before you run out. Prescriptions we receive on one day may not be ready the next day for some of the reasons I will outline below.
Please also be kind to our staff as we are working through the most difficult time in the history of Community Pharmacy. We have many regular medicines that are unavailable or in limited supply, recently it has included things like aspirin and co-codamol. Our staff are spending hours each day having to search our suppliers to try and obtain them, as they can be in stock one day and out the next. We are supplying more medicines than ever before since the Welsh Government policy to move many patients from 28 day prescriptions to 56 days. This means we are now frequently supplying double the amount we used to, yet our prescription numbers have stayed the same. We are basically doing double the work for half the money as our funding was reduced many years ago.
Frequently we are actually losing money on many medicines when we supply them, as the Government is paying us less than what we buy them for. It is a terrible circumstance that pharmacy owners in the UK have been facing for a number of years now, supplying medicines at a loss to ourselves so that our patients get their treatment, and it means many hours per week spent trying to source them at the best price possible.
UK wholesalers who supply our medicines are also creaking under the weight of supply as they try to source enough medicines. This means that sometimes medicines we order may not always come in the next day, something we don't have control over.
Hence we ask you to order your prescription 7 days before you run out and give us 5 working days before you come. The surgeries are busy too and it can take them 48 hours to get your prescription to us, and we need a minimum 24 hours (but preferably 48 hours) to process it in case we have to wait for stock. We ask this to avoid you having to go without your medicines.
Please understand our staff are working harder than ever trying to juggle ordering stock, dispensing your prescriptions, providing consultations under the Common Ailments Service and the Independent Prescribing Service, answering telephone queries and speaking to customers in the pharmacy who need advice. We are, I promise you, doing our utmost to provide all of these services at this most challenging time.
Your help in managing your medicines appropriately is gratefully appreciated as is your support and understanding.
Gareth and Cathie
