Improve our coverage of pharmacies

[RichardTaylor]

Pharmacies are generally subject to FOI via

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/36/schedule/1/paragraph/45A

At the time of writing we list just 26 pharmacies

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/body/list/pharmacy

A user has contacted us asking us to add "Distance Selling Pharmacies" which we are happy to do. This highlighted our lack of comprehensive coverage of pharmacies.

Proposal: List organisations which run pharmacies, rather than list every pharmacy site/shop/location.

Proposed approach:

• Work with the user who has asked us to improve our coverage specifically of "Distance Selling Pharmacies" to provide what they need/want. This is in-progress.
• Research sources of comprehensive lists of pharmacies. A FOI request for data download from https://odsportal.digital.nhs.uk/ is one option. It appears there may be other relevant public datasets which might be online though.
  • This will enable us to find out how many bodies running pharmacies there are in the UK.
• If we're going to add thousands of bodies tag with key:value tags linking them to an official data source to help with maintenance.
• Consider routes for obtaining contact email addresses, eg. via FOI requests to CCGs (or their successors).
• If we approach the finding of email addresses regionally (eg. by CCG) consider how we can use maps to show progress and gamify the work (or at least clearly show progress).
• Consider the costs/benefits of adding these bodies. I think we do want to try and list all bodies which are subject to FOI, and we want to promote the fact FOI requests can be made to pharmacies. It is challenging to maintain a large database of public bodies though.