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Representatives from Allied Pharmacies have met MPs at Westminster to reassure them that all 129 former Jhoots branches they took out of administration will be up and running shortly.

Allied Pharmacies CEO Suhaib Abdullah (pictured), who led their team during talks with the health minister Stephen Kinnock and members of the All-Party Pharmacy Group on February 4, told Independent Community Pharmacist 50 of the 61 Jhoots pharmacies it took over in November last year “are currently trading” and all 129 “should all be open within two, three, four weeks”.

Abdullah said the only stumbling block to opening all 129 pharmacies was persuading landlords to allow Allied Pharmacies access to buildings which were leased to Jhoots. He admitted it had been difficult to convince some landlords to negotiate the lease because of their “bad experience” with Jhoots but insisted “a lot” of them are open to discussions with Allied Pharmacies.

“It’s just the lease negotiation to access the building. Once we access the building, once we have all wholesaler accounts open, we have the team ready to go in, everything is ready,” Abdullah said.

“The only limiting factor is getting the keys to get access to the building. There are some premises where the landlord had a bad experience and they just don’t want to give it to any pharmacy. In those cases, you look for an alternative and it will take longer then. The majority (of landlords) are ok but some are saying ‘we want to take the building back’. 

“The deal is we take the contract but it’s not like in a normal acquisition where the lease is also assigned and you can’t be kicked out. This one, there is no lease, so we go in and we just say to them ‘we will negotiate a lease while we’re open’ and a lot of them are accepting this.” 

In a statement on Friday, Allied Pharmacies said it stressed to the Government, opposition MPs and the APPG "whose constituencies may have been impacted by issues affecting the Jhoots pharmacy network”, that it was committed “to the early re-opening of closed Jhoots branches and the delivery of a strong, professional and committed pharmacy service for all the communities where they operate”.  

During the meeting with Kinnock, APPG chair Sadik Al-Hassan and its members Rachel Gilmour, Sureena Brackenridge and Ian Roome, Abdullah expressed concerns about community pharmacy funding and inflation which he warned was “having a particularly serious impact on smaller pharmacies”.

However, Allied Pharmacies said it was “very pleased” with the response it received from MPs and Abdullah said “it was particularly striking there was virtually no division on party lines”.

“The MPs we spoke to all recognised the huge importance of an effective, efficient and accessible pharmacy sector in terms of social care and health provision in this country, and they recognise the financial and operational challenges which we face,” he said.

“Of course, we absolutely accept that the Government has multiple competing demands for financial support and we recognise we must operate within the necessary restrictions of our economy. But it was hugely encouraging to find such a level of friendly and supportive concern from every MP we met, from the minister down.”

Allied Pharmacies has about 300 pharmacies across England and Wales. Manjit Jhooty, the director of Jhoots Healthcare Ltd and Pasab Ltd, has said there is no connection between his pharmacies, which he said he will rebrand as JHL Pharmacy, and those acquired by Allied Pharmacies.