A NEW pharmacy could be heading to Bodmin with plans being put in place to make it a reality.

Months after the controversial closure of Asda Pharmacy, located within the Bodmin store of the supermarket chain in July and the earlier closure of the Boots branch on Bell Lane, Bodmin has been left with two walk-in pharmacies covering its growing population comprising of Boots on Fore Street and Day Lewis on Bell Lane.

Banns Pharmacy, established in 1933 and operates five pharmacy branches across Cornwall, has confirmed it is very keen to open another in Bodmin to cater for that market.

However, in order to open a new pharmacy, it has to prove to the NHS that it is required in the local area in the form of local submissions detailing the difficulties experienced with existing provision, leading to an appeal from Banns for local residents to get in touch.

The proposals were discussed at a recent meeting of Bodmin Town Council’s planning committee, with the authority’s councillors requested to also send in a letter of support in order to help make the plans a reality.

At the meeting, chaired by Cllr Jeremy Cooper in the absence of regular chair, Cllr Pete Skea, councillors present voted to write a letter of support for the proposals.

It is not presently clear where the new pharmacy would be located, however an indicative map of the area that it could be located in shows it is likely to be located in a part of Bodmin which is primarily residential with little to no provision in the way of this type of accessible pharmacy provision, with the map of proposed locations showing a radius between Rock Lane and Queen’s Crescent on the west of the town.

Directors at the company said that they have chosen this location as their ideal location in order to improve the accessibility of pharmacy services for as many people in the town as possible.

Sarbijt Singh, a director of Banns Pharmacy said: “For some time now, it has been clear that the people of Bodmin have been struggling to properly access pharmacy services and the closure of Boots and ASDA has put a lot of additional pressure on remaining pharmacies.

“Unfortunately, we cannot simply open another pharmacy as we would like to as the NHS has very strict rules when it comes to allowing pharmacies to open and will only permit another pharmacy to open if there is enough evidence of patients have significant difficulty accessing the remaining pharmacies.

“We are therefore really keen to hear from local people about their experience of accessing pharmacies and we would welcome any comments to be sent to us at [email protected].

“Hopefully we can convince the NHS to allow us to open and provide another pharmacy. We would like to open to the south west of Bodmin, off St Mary’s Road so that we can improve the accessibility of pharmacy services for as many people as possible.”