Pharmacies have again been voted the “most essential” high street service, the Association of Convenience Stores (ACS) announced earlier this month (July 9).

An ACS survey of 2,000 people across the UK found pharmacies were voted the “most essential” for “the consultative and trusted status they have in the community” – ahead of the second-placed post office and third-placed convenience stores.

Read more: Pharmacies ‘most essential’ service for neighbourhoods, survey finds

The ACS said despite online alternatives being available for pharmacy, its report showed that “when local people need to talk to someone they trust, they tend to gravitate toward these services”.

It is the fifth year in a row community pharmacies have ranked top for importance, and for the past five years they have also remained in second place continuously for the “most positive impact”.

Pharmacy was pipped to first place on this metric by the post office in 2025, with ACS saying this reflects the impact on house prices, jobs created, services provided and “the reaction that a new store or the threat of the closure of an existing store elicits”.

Read more: Pharmacy clinical service funding ‘insufficient’, finds NHSE report

ACS chief executive James Lowman said the report “provides a blueprint for the kind of services that people want on their local high streets and highlights the need for crucial services like banking, prescription collections and post offices”.

The annual report looks at “how people view the value of different services in their local communities” and includes 16 different services such as banks, restaurants, pubs, coffee shops, hairdressers and sports facilities.

The latest report found the least wanted services on UK high streets were vape shops, pawnbrokers and fast-food shops.

Read more: ‘Horrifying’: Pharmacy Access Scheme fails to prevent 58 closures

It comes as C+D reported earlier this year that only 9,999 bricks-and-mortar pharmacies remained in England at the end of March 2025 - the first time numbers fell below 10,000 since 2005.

And in November, new analysis of pharmacy closure data found that high street pharmacies will be “extinct” by 2039 at current closure rates.