Cycle 17's draft framing was a Boots bimodality hypothesis: a "clean" cluster (Sheffield, Bristol, Manchester) at 9–12% ghost rates versus a "half-closed" cluster (Leeds, Liverpool, Plymouth, Newcastle) at 40–53%. Cycle 19 added four more West Midlands cities (Wolverhampton, Coventry, Dudley, Walsall) and Nottingham to the audit, and the result collapses the two-cluster story into three.

The 13-city ghost-rate table (fresh cycle 19 pull)

Sorted by ghost rate, the cities fall into three visually distinct clusters.

Cluster 1 — Clean (0–13% ghost)

Bristol, Dudley, Sheffield, Manchester. These four cities have Boots estates where the NHS Digital register matches operating reality. Four branches in Dudley, ten in Bristol — every single one dispensing items and posting revenue.

The clean-cluster signature is a Southern / Midlands non-core pattern: three of the four cities sit outside the Boots 2023 rationalisation footprint. Sheffield is the one Yorkshire exception. Manchester is the one Northern exception. The "Boots stayed clean" cities are NOT geographically coherent — they cluster on post-2023 closure geometry, not latitude.

Cluster 2 — Moderate (25–36% ghost)

Birmingham, Walsall, Coventry, Nottingham. This is the true Midlands cluster. The register is partially out of date, but the corrected operating count is still within 70% of the raw count.

Birmingham's B1 £55,435 per-branch is the lowest operating average in this cluster, which is why the city-core closure exposure is real even though its ghost rate is unremarkable. The Birmingham problem is an operating-revenue problem, not a ghost problem.

Nottingham NG1 5DT is the cycle 19 atlas addition. With 11 Boots contractor codes, 7 operating, it sits squarely in this middle cluster. Nottingham's operating Boots average of £109,595 is the highest in the moderate cluster — the city core is healthy despite the 4-ghost overhang.

Cluster 3 — Half-closed (40–57% ghost)

Plymouth, Leeds, Liverpool, Newcastle, Wolverhampton. Every city in the half-closed cluster is either North England or Black Country. Plymouth is the only southern city, and its 40% rate sits right on the cluster boundary.

The half-closed cluster contains cities where the register is a poor indicator of the operating estate. Wolverhampton's raw reading of 7 branches collapses to 3. Newcastle's raw 17 collapses to 8. Leeds and Liverpool both lose half.

Wolverhampton at 57.1% is the cycle 19 headline: it displaces Newcastle as the most rationalised English Boots city core PharmSee has measured.

The clusters don't predict per-branch revenue

A critical nuance: ghost rate does not predict operating performance. Plymouth runs the highest operating average in the atlas (£150,572) while sitting at 40% ghost. Wolverhampton sits at 57% ghost with £137,266 operating average (the second-highest in the atlas).

Conversely, Leeds at 50% ghost runs £63,048 per operating branch — the second-lowest average in the atlas after Birmingham B1. Bristol at 0% ghost runs £66,256 — third-lowest.

The two signatures tell different stories:

• High ghost + high operating average (Plymouth £150k, Wolverhampton £137k, Newcastle £123k): Boots pulled back hard, and the survivors are big regional branches. Plymouth's 64.7% Boots share of local vacancies (cycle 16) fits this pattern — fewer, larger, high-gravity sites.
• Low ghost + low operating average (Bristol £66k): Boots kept the estate intact but each branch carries a relatively thin dispensing load.
• Mid ghost + low operating average (Birmingham £55k): the worst combination — register not rationalised, operating branches weak.

The commercial implication

The cluster a city falls into maps to a different rationalisation risk profile:

• Clean cluster cities are unlikely to see further closures. Boots has already completed whatever register-cleanup work it intended; the operating estate is stable.
• Moderate cluster cities are where the next wave of register updates will happen. Some Birmingham, Coventry, Nottingham and Walsall ghosts will formally drop off the register without closing new operating branches. Birmingham B1 is the exception — it has active closure exposure on top of ghost overhang.
• Half-closed cluster cities have already taken the pain. The remaining operating branches are the durable core. Further closures in Wolverhampton, Newcastle, Plymouth would come from the big-branch tier, not the small-branch tail — and they'd be strategically significant.

What to do with this

If you're a Boots operator, investor, or pharmacy consultant, the practical takeaway is that "Boots has 547 UK vacancies" needs a cluster-adjusted interpretation. The half-closed cluster cities concentrate higher-revenue vacancies. The moderate cluster cities produce lower-revenue vacancies. The clean cluster cities produce vacancies at whatever the stable-estate rate is for that geography.

Plymouth's 64.7% local Boots share of vacancies (cycle 16) combined with 40% ghost rate and £150k per-branch operating average makes Plymouth the single highest-gravity Boots local market in the atlas.

Explore the data

• Search 547 live Boots pharmacy jobs — filter by city to see cluster effects
• Birmingham B1 underperformance analysis
• PharmSee location analyzer — run your own 3-mile ghost audit

Methodology

All data from PharmSee's NHS Digital register pull (cycle 19, April 2026). 3-mile rings via /api/location/analyze. A "ghost" is a contractor code with zero dispensing items and zero services revenue over the 12-month window. The cycle 14 ghost convention is maintained. The 13-city sample is England-only because PharmSee's pharmacy register does not include Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland (see the Wales half-integration piece).

The cycle 18 non-operating contractor filter feature proposal would automate this cluster calculation and correct every atlas headline PharmSee publishes.