THE Lancashire Evening Telegraph today joined campaigners fighting plans which could spell the end for our neighbourhood chemists.

MPs are also backing our fight and East Lancashire pharmacists have written to the Department of Health registering their protest.

The deregulation move will allow chemists to be set up anywhere and will threaten smaller community businesses, as more customers use conveniently placed shops in supermarkets or town centres for their prescriptions.

Currently, pharmacists can only dispense in an area if local health authorities are satisfied it is 'necessary or desirable' for them to do so. A report by the Office of Fair Trading has said this is hampering choice and competition.

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The OFT report was written for the Department of Trade and Industry which the Government will respond to next month.

But Director of Operations for the East Lancashire Pharmaceutical Committee Mark Collins said: "Current regulations ensure an accessible spread of pharmacies so they are situated where people can get to them.

"If deregulation happens, there will be increased financial stress on community pharmacies and they will have to go where the business is. This will mean clustering around big health centres and in supermarkets and not in deprived and needy areas.

"We feel the OFT is looking at things purely in commercial terms."

United Co-op, which runs 500 pharmacies across the country, including branches in Burnley, Blackburn and Accrington, has put a petition in shops against the changes.

Nia Evans, pharmacy superintendent with United Co-op, said: "The removal of the current regulations will lead to a decrease in the income of small pharmacies, whose primary business is delivering NHS services on behalf of the government.

"Local communities will suffer if these pharmacies close. There may be more pharmacies as a result of deregulation but not necessarily where they are needed to provide patient care, rather where they are commercially attractive to large organisations."

Burnley MP Peter Pike said he would be concerned to see anything which threatened the network of neighbourhood chemists.

He said: "If we do lose them, pharmacies will go to out-of-town supermarkets which will be damaging for pensioners and those without cars, including the poorest who often need chemists the most."

Vicky Shepherd, of Age Concern in Blackburn, said: "We'd like to see the role of pharmacists increased, especially in terms of giving advice, so anything which reduces access to them for older people is of great concern to us."

A spokeswoman for Burnley, Pendle and Rossendale Primary Care Trust said pharmaceutical advisers from the PCT were due to discuss the issue today.

There are some 12,250 community pharmacies in the UK, providing NHS prescriptions and selling over-the-counter medicines worth a combined total of £8.6bn a year.

The OFT said removing restrictions on entry to the community pharmacy market would give consumers more choice, benefits from greater competition and better access to pharmacy services. There would also be large regulatory cost savings for business and government.