For the last 30-odd years, Graham Jones has owned the Pharmacy in Lambourn (and also the one in Shrivenham) where he has become a very familiar and well-respected local figure. Not content with running these businesses, he also represented the Lambourn ward on West Berkshire Council for 22 years, for 10 of which he was also Leader of the Council. We managed to catch up with him to ask about both of these different roles as well as the vital matters of his desert-island choice of music, book, film and luxury object. 

How long have you been a pharmacist for?  

38 years, I qualified in ’86, after a year as a pre-registration pharmacist at Boots in Banbury and a pharmacy degree from Liverpool School of Pharmacy.

How many pharmacies do you own or run? 

For the last couple of decades we have run two pharmacies, in Lambourn and Shrivenham. We purchased Lambourn in 1992 off Keith and Yvonne Haddrell. I understand that a pharmacy has existed in Lambourn for at least 100 years and we are the fourth custodians. Keith and Yvonne established the pharmacy in its present building; it was previously situated next door in Broadway House. We opened Shrivenham as a new pharmacy in 1997. We have also owned pharmacies in Swindon and Watlington but chose to concentrate on the two we have now.

What qualifications do you need to be a pharmacist? 

A degree in Pharmacy. In my day this was a three-year course, now it is a four-year one. Following on from the degree is a one-year pre-registration period and exams.

Aside from the qualifications, what are the main qualities that someone would need?

People skills. As well as the knowledge, you need to be able to relate to and communicate with a huge range of people. Any community pharmacist needs to be able to understand their community every bit as much as they need to understand medicine. In turn, pharmacists are ideally placed to be advocates for their community’s needs.

Community pharmacy is both a business and a profession. We provide services for the NHS but also have to run a business. Anyone embarking on community pharmacy as a career also has to understand the fundamentals of running a business.

What are the main ways the profession has changed since you first embarked on it?

It has steadily (and rightly) become more clinical. In my early days most of my knowledge was wasted but it is now becoming integral to the service. Pharmacy First services allow us to treat a range of ailments so saving GPs’ time and giving patients convenience. Running vaccination clinics would have been unthinkable in the ’80s: now it is very much standard practice. Being able to step forward and provide vaccine services during the pandemic brought us much closer to the community.

There have certainly been some changes recently, including the Pharmacy First scheme that you’ve just mentioned. Tell us a bit about that.

Pharmacy First has been a big step in the right direction for community pharmacy. In the past we would have had to refer people to the GP in the sure knowledge of what was wrong and what would be prescribed later in the day or the following day. Now we can treat shingles, impetigo, uncomplicated UTIs, infected insect bites, middle ear infections (children only), infected sore throats and sinusitis.

In addition we can (with patient permission) access a patient’s summary care record to check for allergies etc and report back any course of treatment to the GP. Pharmacy First gives us the tools to both treat the patient immediately and save resources elsewhere in the system. A couple of weeks ago it was particularly satisfying to be able to treat a case of shingles on a Saturday morning so giving the antivirals to the patient immediately (treatment for this is time-critical) for what can be a very debilitating condition.  

Pharmacy First is not about “getting antibiotics from the pharmacist” as many have portrayed it, but about giving patients the most effective treatment PDQ.

As well as running pharmacies, you also had a separate career as a district councillor and, on two occasions, Leader of West Berkshire Council. Talk us briefly through that.

It was a great privilege to represent the Lambourn Valley on West Berkshire Council, a role I did for 22 years. Being the village pharmacists was a great asset to the role and kept me very grounded in the community – people were very forthright when they thought I got things right or wrong.

I became Leader in 2005 after being leader of the opposition for two years and originally carried on until 2012. By then it was time for a change both for me and the Council. Tragic events brought me back to the role in 2017 when the then leader, Roger Croft, died following a car accident and I lead the authority for a further two years. In 2019 I decided it was time to move on and retired from the Council. Covid then almost immediately took over work life, and the pharmacy work load has never abated!

What prompted your desire to become a councillor in the first place?

Politics was in my blood from an early age. My father had been a councillor on Liverpool City Council and had always been active.

If you are going to shape and change things, you cannot do so from the side lines, and when I was invited to stand for election to West Berkshire I jumped at the opportunity.

How easy was it to combine being a councillor with having a full-time job?

Being the representative for Lambourn integrated easily with  the pharmacy: people knew where to find me and I could often resolve things during the working day. The role of Leader was more demanding and many would regard this as a full-time job. I did it on two days a week.

Yes, I would have liked to have had more time for this, but it’s also important to have other interests and understand wider perspectives. I had a great team of councillors and officers around me, which was just as well as I learned pretty quickly that I had to delegate.

Tell us a bit about what being the leader of a unitary authority involves.

As leader you sit at the apex of the council’s political structure, you are the “voice” of the authority and have to have a good knowledge of all its services.

In many ways the job is easy as you have 1,600 council officers (all specialists in their own fields) helping you do your job and I was supported by a great team of fellow councillors. I developed certain “cat herding” skills and hopefully got most of the team pointing in the same direction at the same time.

The breadth of services at a unitary council is immense and includes waste, recycling, planning, education, social care, highways and much more. With the ever-increasing cost of social care it did often seem that political parties are competing to be able to manage the contraction of other services to fund the care sector.

You were leader twice, the second time in sad circumstances to which you referred. What was it like going back to a job you’d done before?

As above I returned to the role after five years when we were all in a state of shock, and colleagues looked to me for stability (I had been Roger Croft’s deputy). I knew it would be a much shorter stint as Leader and after two years it was definitely time to hand the baton on again.

What was the most difficult decision you had to take during your time as Leader?

There were many decisions I did not enjoy taking but one of my primary responsibilities was to manage the budget properly.  These decisions were made easier by the fact that they were made by the collective Executive or in some cases the Executive. Running West Berkshire Council was very much a team exercise.

As the “team captain”, my personal responsibility was appointing the members of the Executive. This involved developing new council members to perform the various portfolio roles, moving them around and, on occasions, demoting them. A very difficult but necessary task, especially with friends (as many of them became). Hopefully I did it sympathetically.

Imagine if you can that I’m Lauren Laverne and this is Desert Island Discs. What would be you must-have piece of music?

An iconic tune from my youth – Hotel California by The Eagles.

And your book?

As I will have plenty of time to contemplate life, Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari.

And – not an option she offers – your film (a DVD player will be waiting on the island)?

Eeek… as someone brought up in Sheffield, and as some scenes were filmed next door to where I grew up, The Full Monty.

And your luxury object?

A pedalo so I can keep up my cycling and go fishing as well.

…but not use it to try to escape? I warn you, Lauren comes down pretty hard on people who try to do that.

Promise.

You’ve got it…