Complaints about pharmacy professionals have risen 8 per cent in the past year, data from the General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC) has revealed.

The regulator received 840 complaints about pharmacists' fitness to practise in 2012-13, up from 777 in 2011-12, the GPhC revealed in its annual report, published on Friday (June 28).

The GPhC did not identify any particular reason behind the rise in complaints, but pharmacists told C+D working pressures could have fuelled the upwards trend.

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	Sid Dajani, contractor and member of the English Pharmacy Board, said increasing bureaucracy and stock shortages were eating into time spent on patient care. "The bottom line is, the more we have to concentrate on the financial aspects of a business, the less time we spend with patients and the more errors we make," he told C+D.

Mr Dajani argued that financial pressures had left him unable to take on another member of staff to share the workload. The profession needed protected learning time to ensure clinical skills were up to scratch, he told C+D, stressing that gaps in knowledge could have fuelled some of the complaints.

Independent Pharmacy Federation chair Fin McCaul backed the argument. Although he stressed more information was needed on the nature of the complaints, he suspected the working environment was partly to blame.

"We've still got supply issues, which are a massive frustration for staff and patients, and generally those are increasing rather than standing still," Mr McCaul told C+D. "Given we've also got the rollout of electronic prescriptions [with] the confusion and challenges that has, and the workload pressures because of the economic climate we're working in, then there may be a reason for this."

In September last year, the General Medical Council revealed that complaints against doctors had risen 23 per cent between 2010 and 2011.