Part of The Pharmacist’s series of case studies on how the funding cuts are affecting ordinary pharmacists, a Southampton contractor explains what effect they are having on his business

Sid Dajani (pictured, left), owner, Wainwright’s Chemist, near Southampton

‘The cuts to my funding are nearer 23.9% than the expected 2%. So it’s a lot worse than I expected.

‘Our workload has gone up by 1%, and if you add this to the 23.9% funding cut I’ve seen, this means that although we are absorbing the losses by not taking on extra staff, the level of risk has increased because with increased workload, there’s no money to hire more staff to compensate for the increased workload. At the moment, the morale in staff is very hard to maintain, which means a higher risk of errors. We are working harder for less money.

‘It’s going a lot worse than I thought it would be at this point. The reduced funding, the increased demand and the inadequate resources we have are all contributing to a negative impact on the health and wellbeing of our patients because we’re not doing as many deliveries as we once did. The cuts have happened too fast to work. It’s not given us a chance to adapt to the changes and we’re having difficulty meeting patients’ expectations.

‘The injustices, absurdities and follies of the Government cuts have not been exposed to the patients because, as usual, we’ve absorbed the pressures. However, patients have noticed, for example, that we’re not delivering as much and the lack of staff in our business means there’s less time to talk to them. It is very, very hard. If a member of my staff leaves, I won’t be replacing them. I was looking at increasing the number of staff I employ to match the workload, but that’s not going to happen.’

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