MORE than 500 people have signed a petition for a pharmacy at a new £1.8m medical centre in Barnsley after the body which oversees the NHS refused a licence.
Pharmacist Steven Lo, who has chemists across the borough, funded the building of the Woodland Drive Medical Centre, which is due to open on November 3 on the basis he would be able to open one in it.
The purpose-built centre has space for a pharmacy - but it cannot be used because a medical licence was refused by NHS England.
It means once the Dodworth Road GP surgery closes and patients start to use the new centre, they will have to travel nearly a mile to Mr Lo's Tripharm pharmacy on Dodworth Road to pick up their prescriptions.
Mr Lo said he signed a contract for the new centre to include a new pharmacy but regulations which would have allowed him to move Tripharm have since changed.
He added: "I'm devastated - patients would have a better service if there was a pharmacy at the new centre. We've spent all this money and we still can't use it. Patients want us to be there and I think their wanting to help us is borne out of anxiety."
** The full story is in the Barnsley Chronicle, dated October 31. **
