Our cycle 12 Liverpool Pharmacy First analysis counted 73 independent pharmacies in the L1 1JJ 3-mile ring. Cycle 14 re-audited the register with tighter chain-classification rules and came up with 70 — the three-branch difference being how we treat small regional chains (Well, Lloyds ghosts) vs true independents. The corrected picture is still startling: independent pharmacies are the dominant economic actor in Liverpool's core pharmacy market, holding 66% of branches and 75% of dispensing revenue.

The cycle 14 audit, branch by chain

Running PharmSee's location-analyze endpoint for L1 1JJ at 3 miles, then classifying each contractor by name:

Independents capture 66.0% of branches and 75.0% of total dispensing revenue. Boots, the largest chain by branch count in the catchment, captures only 11.3% of branches and 6.1% of total revenue — a massively lower share than the branch count would imply, driven largely by the six zero-revenue Boots ghosts in the 12-branch sample.

The ghost problem, revisited

Of the 106 branches in the ring, 19 (17.9%) record zero dispensing revenue in the current PharmSee snapshot. The ghost concentration is not uniform across chains:

• Boots: 6 of 12 branches zero-revenue (50%)
• Rowlands: 3 of 7 branches zero-revenue (43%)
• Lloyds: 2 of 2 branches zero-revenue (100%)
• Independent: 8 of 70 branches zero-revenue (11%)
• Cohens, Asda, Superdrug, Tesco, Well, Day Lewis: 0 zero-revenue between them

The 100% Lloyds ghost rate is the known 2023 Lloyds estate exit — the NHS Digital register has not yet pruned those contractor codes. The 50% Boots ghost rate is more surprising and worth investigating further; it may represent stale PharmSee data rather than closed branches. The 11% independent ghost rate is plausibly real closures plus some register lag.

If we purge all 19 ghosts from the denominator, the Liverpool 3-mile catchment becomes:

• 87 operating pharmacies
• 62 independent operating (71.3% of operating branches)
• £10,117,284 total revenue across 87 branches = £116,290 average
• £7,588,637 independent revenue across 62 branches = £122,397 average

The independent majority is bigger after ghost purging, not smaller. Chains carry more ghost weight than independents do.

Why independents dominate revenue per branch

The £122,397 independent non-zero average beats the £102,970 Boots non-zero average. A single independent Liverpool pharmacy is dispensing, on average, ~19% more revenue than a single operating Boots in the same ring. The drivers:

1. Independents tend to be older-relationship practices. Many Liverpool independents have served the same streets for decades, with stable elderly patient lists and high repeat-script volume.
2. Independents take on specials and unusual items more readily than chains. That flexibility translates into higher per-item margins and a wider item mix.
3. Independent owner-operators often work longer rotas. Single-pharmacist owner-operators aren't constrained by the Band 6/7 NHS shift structure, and the open-hours differential shows up in the dispensing volume.

Tesco is the outlier with a non-zero average of £166,567 — the highest per-branch revenue of any chain in the sample. Only 2 Tesco branches, so small-sample, but consistent with the supermarket-pharmacy pattern of serving a high-footfall weekly-shop customer base with large script volumes per visit.

The Pharmacy First implication

If independents hold 70 branches (66% share), they also hold 66% of the Liverpool Pharmacy First £636,000 ceiling — roughly £420,000 of annual capture ceiling. Our earlier regional leakage analysis estimates ~60% of that ceiling gets captured at urban sites, giving:

• Independent Pharmacy First captured revenue (estimate): £252,000
• Independent Pharmacy First leakage (estimate): £168,000

That's £168,000 of annual revenue the Liverpool independent pharmacy sector is leaving on the table every year. Divided across 70 branches: ~£2,400 per site per year — roughly half a day's dispensing revenue.

For a sector that competes with well-resourced chains on tight margins, £2,400 per site per year is not "nothing". Capture-rate improvement — staffing for the consultation room, training the counter team on triage, building the GP referral relationship — has a directly calculable return.

The broader applicability question

Liverpool's 66% independent branch share is almost certainly above the English urban average. Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds and Nottingham all had significantly larger Boots-and-Lloyds estates through the 2010s, and even after the Lloyds exit those catchments are still more chain-heavy than Merseyside. We'll run the equivalent audit in cycle 15 for Birmingham B1 and Manchester M1 to quantify how much of Liverpool's "independent majority" story is Merseyside-specific.

The hypothesis we're testing: the Liverpool pattern is a regional archetype for the North West, and the true English average is closer to 55-58% independent share. If the Birmingham and Manchester audits confirm that, we'll have a much better national picture of where independent sector economics are strongest.

The methodological takeaway

Chain classification is harder than it looks. The 3-branch delta between cycle 12's 73-independents figure and cycle 14's 70 came down to three judgement calls:

1. Are Lloyds ghost branches (contractor codes active, revenue zero) classed as "Lloyds" or excluded?
2. Is a single-site named "SomeName Pharmacy Ltd" treated as independent or as a small regional chain?
3. Are Well branches — owned by Bestway, but retail-branded — classed as "Well" or rolled into "Independent"?

Cycle 14 chose: Lloyds ghosts classed as Lloyds (kept separate), all single-site pharmacies classed as independent, Well classed as its own chain. Those choices are defensible. Other analysts would reasonably choose differently, and the headline number would move by 3-5 branches. The 66% independent share is robust against any of those classification choices — the lowest plausible figure is 61%, the highest 69%. Either way, independents are the dominant actor.

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