Plans for 24-hour prescription-dispensing machine in Leominster

A chemist’s in a Herefordshire town has applied to install a 24-hour prescription-dispensing machine.

The independent Westfield Walk Pharmacy in Leominster intends to install a Medpoint facility, “of similar footprint to an ATM machine”, on its shop front.

The British-made machines accept payments, and “give patients convenience, whilst increasing customer loyalty and freeing up pharmacists’ time”, the company’s website says.

But this will first have to be given “advertisement consent” by Herefordshire Council. Comments on the application, numbered 222097, can be made until August 11.

Manager Sally Rowberry said: “It will mean our customers won’t be bound by our opening hours, and will avoid the build-up of traffic in front of the shop.”

She added that the chemist’s had been approached as a possible tenant for the town’s planned new centralised medical centre, but “the rent they were asking would have meant it wasn’t viable”.