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As the owner of an essential small pharmacy I feel like an endangered species on the verge of extinction, says Graham Phillips, owner of the Manor Pharmacy Group in Hertfordshire

It went ominously quiet on the essential (but small) pharmacy front during the election period, but, post-purdah, things are, if anything, much worse. The ESP scheme has ended and we've been granted a six-month financial reprieve, but six more months of worry and stress about the future is of little comfort to me, my staff and my patients. Manor Pharmacy, an ESP which I have owned for over 10 years, is the only pharmacy in Elstree Village.

It is a social asset at the heart of an isolated, predominantly elderly community. The ESP viability 'top-up' payments have not made us complacent. Far from it. We are awaiting HLP accreditation and meanwhile we engage actively with the full gambit of advanced, enhanced and locally-commissioned services, from MURs to flu jabs and EHC provision. Of course the demand won't disappear if we close; it will simply spill over into the GP surgery and the A&E department of the nearest hospital (Watford General), where the struggle to cope was covered by Panorama recently.

Why did I bother?

When I met with the area team many weeks ago, they asked for evidenced and costed proposals as to why we should remain open. They then gave us just three days to respond to a proposed patient survey. To my utter amazement they did not ask any relevant questions about the proposals they had invited me to make.

The proposals do not even appear in the questionnaire, thereby denying my patients and customers the opportunity to express their views. Call me paranoid, but it all makes it extremely difficult to reach any conclusion other than this is nothing more than an exercise to justify a decision that the area team has already made and is now working backwards from a predetermined end-point.

The survey was flawed and badly drafted. The phrasing of the questions was technical NHS jargon so my patients won't understand them. Many of the questions were leading and key questions not asked. My elderly patients are far more concerned about how dementia sufferers should be helped than post-gender reassignment equality.

NHS endorsements

It is not as if the ESP subsidy actually costs the local NHS a penny because it is top-sliced from the pharmacy global sum... but consider the bigger picture. Removing this modest funding, which amounts to about 0.005 per cent of the total NHS budget, runs completely counter to the frequent endorsements of pharmacy that we hear from the NHS.

The Five Year Forward View specifically identifies community pharmacy as having a key role. Simon Stevens specifically mentioned pharmacy again on the Andrew Marr Show at the end of May. So why take away this local lifeline? 'Essential' small pharmacies are exactly that.