Comeback bid for village pharmacy

Rowlands Pharmacy moved from the premises on Bankside to the recently opened Flansham Park Health Centre in Felpham on July 30, as reported.

The relocation deprived Middleton of a pharmacy for the first time in about 80 years.

Rowlands' area manager Debby Crockford said on Monday the company was keen to restore dispensing prescriptions there if the NHS would allow it.

The licences, which allow medicines to be dispensed, are tightly controlled by the health service. Rowlands originally wanted to run the Middleton and Flansham Park pharmacies.

But its application was turned down by the NHS along with an appeal. Only the new pharmacy was allowed.

Mrs Crockford said she had been in contact with a Middleton residents' group about the prospect of restoring a pharmacy there.

'The village really appreciated the pharmacy being there,' she stated. 'And I know the residents are very keen that we have a pharmacy re-established in the centre of it.'

But she stated that Rowlands desperately needed the extra space offered by the premises at the health centre on Flansham Park.

It comprised about 300sq m made to measure for the company's requirements.

The dispensing area within it was three to four times the size of the former one at the Middleton outlet where several tens of thousands of prescriptions were dispensed each month.

'We had outgrown those premises. We were doing so many items that we just didn't have the space and the opportunity arose to move to the health centre,' she stated.

'Ideally, we would have liked to have run both premises as pharmacies but our application was rejected along with our appeal.'

The opening of the new pharmacy had enabled several new jobs to be created.

A total of ten full and part time workers were employed there along with two pharmacists over the course of its six-days-a- week business.

She added that Rowlands ran a prescription collection service from surgeries which would also deliver the medicines to the patients' door if it was required. This helped to lessen the blow of the loss of the pharmacy in Middleton.

That business has been renamed the Middleton Drugstore to reflect its new role selling only products such as toiletries. Two members of staff work there.