STORM clouds are gathering over rural pharmacies such as those found across The Herald area, after private letters between Farnham MP and Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt, the Chancellor and the Prime Minister were revealed.

According to The Telegraph, which claims to have seen the letters after they were disclosed in a High Court challenge, Mr Hunt warned that pharmacies would have to close because of an impending cut to a subsidy worth hundreds of millions of pounds a year to chemists in rural and deprived areas.

Mr Hunt, the MP for South West Surrey, wrote in his letter to Theresa May dated August 2 and copied to Chancellor and fellow Surrey MP Phillip Hammond that the cut would mean “500-900 pharmacies will close”.

He continued: “We cannot know exactly how individual pharmacies will be affected by the funding reductions and there is a risk that some pharmacies may close as a result of these changes, although this has never been our objective.”

Rural pharmacies in Mr Hunt’s constituency include Bourne Pharmacy, Elstead Pharmacy, Boots in Chiddingfold and Lloyds in Beacon Hill; the latter located just one mile from the local MP’s Hindhead constituency office.

Responding to this week’s reports, Mr Hunt told The Herald: “Just as we are asking all parts of the NHS to make efficiencies, so too we need the pharmacy sector to play its part.

“This doesn’t have to mean pharmacies closing - we have explicitly protected funding for all pharmacies more than a mile from the next one - but it does mean being imaginative as we cope with the sustained pressure of an ageing population.”