Over 5000 people have been vaccinated against Covid-19 at Hucknall's vaccination centre since it first opened in March.

The centre which is based at Rolls Royce Leisure Centre is run by brothers Ammar, Qammar and Adnan Nazir, as well as Ammar's wife Ruckhsana .

Ammar said working in the local community helped him to quickly understand the need for a vaccination centre in Hucknall.

"We run a pharmacy in Hucknall on Nabbs Lane and I also work as a podiatrist at Greenwood Healthcare so I'm very much in touch with the patients that are here, whether they come to the pharmacy or whether they come for podiatry services. One thing I realised in January/ February time is that, and a lot of our patients are elderly, they were travelling really far away to get vaccinated. At that time they were travelling to Mansfield, Kirkby-in-Ashfield I think it was as well, across Nottingham. For younger people it's different, they drive but for elderly people it proved to be a bit difficult. And I kept hearing these complaints.

"Now because we own the pharmacy we can open pharmacy led vaccination centres so that was the main drive to provide a service to help out people in Hucknall, so they don't have to go that far and that's what led to the motivation to look into it, apply for it, seek help from councillors for support and then we opened this centre on the 20th March. And the feedback's been great since then so that was the main reason."

The application process was long and complicated but the impact on, and response from, the community has made it all seem worth it.

"It's a lot of hard work, a lot of paperwork. The first priority, obviously you've got to apply, then you've got to show site plans, you've got to be able to find a place that's open, that fits the criteria, that has enough capacity, and not just for two or three weeks we're talking for the next couple of months. For that we're grateful in Hucknall to Rolls Royce who provided this site to us for free so it's a big thanks to them for being part of the community to give this site to us and to give it to us until August/September and longer if needed. It was a long lengthy sort of process, we started the process in January and we were approved around about middle of March."

The only source of frustration has been with the amount of vaccines that the centre has been able to administer so far.

"Our restricting factor is the number of vaccines and vaccine availability. In March we had two weeks of vaccine availability and then it reduced for the next two weeks and then it was finished. So we spent the best part of end of April/beginning of May with no vaccines so the last three weeks we haven't been vaccinating here because we haven't had any vaccines delivered to us. We've now opened our doors to both Pfizer vaccine and the AstraZeneca one and now the situation is sorted with the NHS and the government in that there's a lot more vaccines available so we're pretty much booked up until the end of June and we should be fine for July.

"The response from people has been brilliant. We can probably do 1000 here a day and we are planning to on the 4th of June. We've got 1100 patients booked up just on the Friday as a 13 hour session. If I had 1000 (every day) I'd do 1000, it's the availability."

"We have done just over 5000. We would probably have preferred to do 10,000 by now."

Mr Nazir has been impressed by the response of the local community.

"We've had a lot of people from the local area that've given up their time whether they're coming for the morning or coming in the afternoon or some of them spending all day. But generally speaking the spirit is always high and good, people are always happy to be vaccinated and are happy for their turn to come. Generally speaking 99.99% of the people are happy to be vaccinated."

The centre has been so successful that the brothers have subsequently opened a further seven centres across the UK.

"This one worked well for us, the response has been great, the feedback's been great, the NHS has been happy, the volunteers have been happy. So we thought we can replicate this can't we?

"This is the template. We are much more confident now. You have to remember we'd never run a vaccination centre, it was a learning curve. We did well actually and because we're proud of it we thought we could go further and open a few more but it's a lot of work for the next few months."

Mr Nazir explained his fondness for Hucknall was one of the key reasons that he chose it as the first town in which to open a vaccination centre.

"Outside my home city of Derby, Hucknall is my second home. I've been coming here for over ten years running the pharmacy. I like the people here, I get on with the people here, I know the community here, it's a good town. Hence why the first priority was opening a vaccination centre in Hucknall."