A Lloyds Pharmacy in Swindon has been taken over by new owners after the pharmaceutical chain sold off a number of its stores across the country.

Last week the Lloyds sign was taken down and replaced with a new one saying 'Covingham Pharmacy' as it has been taken over by a small independent chain - SEJ Pharmaceutical 

The company, which is part of the larger SEJ Assets, is owned by brothers Anish and Mitesh Aggarwal who say the name change is part of an overall 'community focus'

"We really liked the Covingham store because although we knew it had had problems under the previous owners we felt it had a great culture," Anish said. 

"We came to visit and we really liked the team it had and the staff culture - we thought 'there are good people in this store' and so we felt we could come in and help to turn it around."

The existing team at the pharmacy have been retained and is learning a new pharmaceutical operating system that the brothers have introduced - with the aim of speeding things up. 

"We've been left with a large backlog of orders that we're slowly getting through, but we've introduced the new Titan system which will help to reduce the pharmacist time required for clinical checks, so this will help massively.

"It's going to take time for us to catch up so people should give us a few weeks to do that, but eventually we want to get to a point where customers are waiting no more than four days for the medication after it has been requested.

"It is the worst thing in the world when you order medication and have to wait when you need it now, and it's even worse when you travel to a pharmacy only to be told when you get there it's not ready."

The Swindon store is one of three that SEJ Pharmaceutical has taken over.