I must declare an interest in your article in last week's edition regarding the “portable pharmacy” in Asda, having retired only five years ago from running a pharmacy in Penryn.

Before the Asda supermarket was built, we were assured that it would only be allowed so long as they did not open either a pharmacy or a post office in-store.

I appreciated at that time that Penryn still had a thriving (if tired) shopping centre in Market Street, and the planners were trying to protect it as long as it could.

However, over the years, various factors (including the building of supermarkets at each end of the Penryn Bypass, moving of the Primary School out of the town centre, house-building along the Kernick Road) contributed to the demise of Penryn as a shopping town.

The number of shops dwindled from more than 40 to less than a dozen as butchers, bakers, and proverbial candle-stick makers closed.

In order to open a pharmacy, it has to be proven to be “necessary” and “desirable.”

In the early days, when Asda re-applied, I argued that neither criterion applied. However, in later years, I saw that most of the population was shopping in the supermarket, and that a better pharmacy service could be supplied by one of the town's pharmacies moving to where the majority of the people were.

I offered to sell my business to Asda, so they would have a licence, then they would only need a “minor re-location” approval to set it up in-store. Nothing came of the offer: and the council still opposed a supermarket pharmacy.

There is no longer a “shopping centre” to protect - that died long ago! So who are the planners protecting now? The only ones who would lose from Asda having a pharmacy are the Penryn GP practice.

At present, Penryn is designated a “rural area” and so the doctors are allowed to dispense drugs on prescription to any patient who lives more than one mile from a pharmacy.

There are probably several thousand patients in the Mabe area, and in the university, who fall into this category.

This dispensing business is very lucrative for doctors - they get paid much more per prescription than a pharmacy does, and for doing no more work.

If a pharmacy were set up in Asda, they would lose all that.

Have you ever seen a poor doctor? Are they not paid enough, just for doing their general practice work? Would the practice be bankrupt if this extra income were lost? I think not!

As I understand it, both pharmacies presently in the town are owned by the same company; so there is no need for two branches in the town centre.

A decent pharmacy gives so much more than just a dispensing service; and the planners, by sticking to their out-dated edicts, are depriving a large part of the population access to such services at a time and at a place which is convenient.

We must wonder, therefore, whether the council's planners are just out of touch with the public they are supposed to be serving: or are they in cahoots with the doctors? Who gains from the status quo? And who loses from any change? I cannot accuse, but I do wonder.

I wish Asda the best of luck, and hope they will provide as good a pharmacy service as the people of Penryn deserve.

David I Turton (retired pharmacist), Penryn