UK Community Pharmacy Openings and Closures Index.
Monthly, owner-segmented figures on England's pharmacy network from NHSBSA's Pharmacy Openings and Closures dataset, paired with Companies House SIC 47730 corporate-formations data. Two independent official spines. England-first; Scotland and Wales v2 queued.
Last updated: 2026-07-23. Published under Open Government Licence v3.0. Download CSV
England's NHS pharmacy network (May 2026)
Pharmacies on an NHS England Pharmaceutical List at May 2026, including 458 distance-selling pharmacies. 9,933 excluding distance sellers.
Net change, May 2025 to May 2026. A pharmacy leaving the list has closed, surrendered its NHS contract, or been absorbed into another site.
From 11,206 (January 2021) to 10,391 (May 2026), the longest run NHSBSA publishes in this dataset.
NHS pharmacy count, Jan 21 to May 26
Total pharmacies on an NHS England Pharmaceutical List at the end of each month, including distance-selling pharmacies. Every point traces back to NHSBSA's published monthly file.
Owner-group composition, year-end snapshot
Small (1-5 premises, mostly independents), Medium (6-99) and Large (100+, the big multiples). December snapshot each year; the final bar is the latest available month, marked with an asterisk.
| Snapshot | Total | Small | Medium | Large |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| December 2021 | 11,148 | 4,071 | 1,716 | 4,980 |
| December 2022 | 11,067 | 4,257 | 1,614 | 4,805 |
| December 2023 | 10,673 | 4,815 | 1,799 | 3,659 |
| December 2024 | 10,451 | 4,899 | 1,837 | 3,308 |
| December 2025 | 10,406 | 5,002 | 1,764 | 3,205 |
| May 2026 (latest) | 10,391 | 5,075 | 1,705 | 3,153 |
Source: Pharmacy Openings and Closures - May 2026, NHS Business Services Authority. Licence: Open Government Licence v3.0. Pulled 2026-07-23.
Companies House corporate layer: SIC 47730
A second, independent data spine from Companies House. SIC code 47730 ("dispensing chemist in specialised stores") covers UK-wide incorporated pharmacy companies, measuring corporate-entity formation rather than NHS contract activity.
as at 2026-07-14
as at 2026-07-14
to 2026-04, -18.2% YoY
227 → 940 a year (+314.1%)
Annual incorporations, SIC 47730 (2016 to 2025)
While the NHS dispensing network above has contracted every year since January 2021, SIC 47730 incorporations have moved the opposite way: 4.1× more new pharmacy companies were formed in 2025 than in 2016. Incorporation counts measure new corporate entities registering under SIC 47730 -- a new incorporation may be a group restructuring, a new entrant, or a holding company, and does not always correspond to a new pharmacy premises opening. Dissolution can lag actual trading closure by many months. This corporate layer is complementary to the NHSBSA contractor count above, not a substitute for it: the two have diverged sharply since 2016 (SIC 47730 annual incorporations up more than 4x while NHS dispensing-pharmacy numbers have fallen every year), which is itself part of the story -- corporate/holding-company formation around pharmacy groups and online-only operators continues even as the physical NHS network shrinks.
Formation seasonality: which month sees the most new pharmacy companies
Average monthly incorporations across 11 years of settled data (excludes the most recent 2 provisional months). Mar is the strongest month, averaging 62.6 incorporations.
Source: Companies House Advanced Search API, SIC 47730. Licence: Open Government Licence v3.0. Incorporation counts pulled 2026-07-23; active/dissolved totals pulled 2026-07-14.
What the data means for pharmacy buyers and sellers
A shrinking contractor count means more distressed and motivated sellers, concentrated among the large multiples rationalising their estates. Buyers face a market where goodwill multiples reflect the contract value of the NHS income stream. The financial and tax structure of the transaction determines how much of that value is retained after CGT, BADR, and stamp duty.
Estimate the financing headroom on a pharmacy acquisition, based on your equity position and estimated dispensing income.
Model the monthly NHS payment cycle and the advance-on-account timing gap that affects every pharmacy's working capital.
Share purchase vs asset purchase, stamp duty, goodwill treatment, and the due-diligence accounting questions every buyer needs answered.
CGT, BADR at 18% for 2026/27, and the tax-structuring decisions that sellers need to resolve before accepting an offer.
How adjusted EBITDA multiples and pence-per-item methods work in practice, and what the accounts need to show to support the asking price.
Structuring the sale to access Business Asset Disposal Relief and minimise the capital gains tax bill on goodwill proceeds.
About this index
NHS dispensing-pharmacy counts: the last-calendar-day-of-month snapshot published in NHSBSA's Pharmacy Openings and Closures dataset, which segments every pharmacy on an NHS England Pharmaceutical List by owner-group size (Small = 1-5 premises, Medium = 6-99, Large = 100+), 100-hour contract status, and distance-selling status. The published monthly CSV is cumulative back to January 2021 and supersedes earlier files where NHSBSA has made backdated corrections, so this index always uses the single latest file rather than stitching together historic releases. Companies House SIC 47730 corporate counts: monthly incorporation counts from the CH Advanced Search API (sic_codes=47730), fetched via the same config-driven engine used across this site's research assets; the most recent 2 months are provisional (CH indexing lag) and excluded from headline and seasonality figures. Active/dissolved company totals are a live snapshot pulled 2026-07-14.
- NHSBSA pharmacy counts cover England only. Scotland uses Public Services Scotland (PSD) data; Wales uses NWSSP; neither is included in this index.
- A pharmacy that changes ownership is recorded as a closure and a same-day reopening under the new owner. This does not affect net-change totals, but it means gross 'opened' and 'closed' counts overstate true market entry/exit -- use the net-change columns, not gross opened/closed, when describing churn.
- NHSBSA states that total figures may not agree month to month, and that backdated amendments occur; the published file for each month is treated as the current source of truth, which can mean small revisions to earlier months versus a prior release of this index.
- Companies House SIC 47730 figures are UK-wide (not England-only) and include holding companies, subsidiaries of pharmacy groups, and wholly private operators without an NHS contract -- they measure corporate-entity formation, not pharmacy premises opening.
- SIC codes are self-reported at incorporation; some pharmacy companies may be coded elsewhere (e.g. general retail) and excluded from the 47730 count, or non-pharmacy businesses may be miscoded into it.
- Small counts in any official NHSBSA or Companies House release may be subject to standard disclosure-control rounding or suppression; this index reports published totals as-is and does not attempt to reconstruct suppressed cells.
Cite this index: UK Community Pharmacy Openings and Closures Index, derived from NHSBSA Pharmacy Openings and Closures (Pharmacy Openings and Closures - May 2026) and Companies House Advanced Search API (SIC 47730). Published under OGL3. Verified 2026-07-23.
Last updated: 2026-07-23. England-only; Scotland and Wales coverage is queued for v2. Download the full monthly series as CSV.
Buying or selling a pharmacy?
Understanding the market context is the starting point. Whether you are buying into a contracting network or exiting at the right moment, the financial and tax structure of the transaction determines how much value you retain.