Dudley Clinical Commissioning Group is proposing to stop prescribing medicines for short-term, minor conditions and ailments.

Self-managing’ medicines including painkillers, hay fever tablets, wart and verruca creams, will only be offered for long-term and chronic conditions.

The borough spends about £2 million per year on widely available, over the counter medicines, while GPs spend an average of £5,000 every day seeing patients with minor ailments that could be treated with remedies bought from a pharmacy, or a shop.

Dudley residents are being asked to give their views on the proposed changes as part of the CCG’s consultation.