Sort PharmSee's 13-city operating-Boots per-branch average by weakness and the bottom of the table is unambiguous:

The bottom-two gap (£8k) is about a tenth of the distance to Plymouth's atlas-topping £150,572. Leeds and Birmingham cluster together numerically. The cycle 17 backlog asked whether this clustering reflected a shared "West Midlands + Yorkshire weak-per-branch" Boots signature.

Cycle 19's full branch list for both cities shows the clustering is numerical coincidence, not a shared cause. The two cities have structurally different Boots footprints.

Leeds LS1: high ghost, flat operating tail

Leeds LS1 4DT 3mi contains 12 Boots contractor codes, 6 operating, 6 ghost — a 50% ghost rate that drops Leeds into the half-closed cluster alongside Liverpool and Newcastle.

The operating tail in Leeds runs from £33,731 (FP763, LS10) up to £97,808 (FCR27, LS5). Half the operating branches (3 of 6) are under £55k. Three of six Leeds operating branches are at or below Birmingham's entire B1 operating average.

The Leeds signature is: Boots already closed half the register, but what's left is still weighted toward marginal sites. The six ghosts haven't absorbed the pain of rationalisation alone.

Birmingham B1: moderate ghost, dense cluster of small branches

Birmingham B1 1BB 3mi contains 8 Boots contractor codes, 6 operating, 2 ghost — 25% ghost rate, the moderate cluster.

Only 2 Birmingham operating branches exceed the £80k mark. The other 4 are between £22,922 and £60,322. Four of six Birmingham operating branches are at or below Leeds's weakest operating branch (£33,731) or just above it.

The Birmingham signature is: Boots has not yet rationalised the dense urban tail. The Bull Ring FJV53 branch sits 0.13 miles from FNM58 (the largest Birmingham operating branch) — a classic sister-branch overlap that normally resolves by closure. The register has two ghosts, but the operating estate still contains candidates for rationalisation.

Two different closure forecasts

The practical distinction matters for closure-watchers and local hiring forecasts:

• Leeds LS1 is unlikely to produce near-term additional closures. The six ghosts represent the already-taken pain. The operating tail is flat-and-marginal but it's already been cut to six. An operator hiring in Leeds should assume the FP763/FK382/FFP17 branches are the long-term floor, not near-term closure candidates.
• Birmingham B1 is still mid-rationalisation. The Bull Ring FJV53 at £22,922 with an adjacent FNM58 sister is the atlas's single most exposed operating Boots branch. PharmSee's cycle 18 closure watch model flagged it as the highest-probability closure in the next 12 months.

Why the numerical coincidence matters

The £55k/£63k pairing is load-bearing in a different way. Any pharmacy career forecast, investor model, or locum-rate estimate that cites "Boots per-branch average" as a national figure conflates the £150k Plymouth tier with the £55k Birmingham tier — a 2.7× spread. Ground-truth Boots economics are city-specific.

For the Yorkshire + West Midlands regional narrative specifically, the honest version is:

• Leeds West Yorkshire commercial signature: 50% register-corrected, operating tail flat, further closure signal weak.
• Birmingham West Midlands commercial signature: 25% register-corrected, dense small-branch cluster, further closure signal strong.

The two cities look numerically adjacent in the atlas table but they sit at different rationalisation stages. Lumping them produces forecasts that are wrong in both directions.

Explore the data

• Search 547 live Boots jobs
• Leeds LS1 audit
• Birmingham B1 closure forecast
• PharmSee location analyzer — run a 3-mile audit for your own city

Methodology

Fresh cycle 19 pull from PharmSee's /api/location/analyze at LS1 4DT and B1 1BB, both at radiusMiles=3. Operating status determined by totalRevenue > 0. Branch-level revenue is NHSBSA dispensing items × £1.29 + services revenue, both on a 12-month window. The ghost-rate convention follows cycle 14.