General Pharmaceutical Council
The General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC) has failed to meet a regulatory standard on timeliness for fitness-to-practise (FtP) cases for the seventh consecutive year, according to the Professional Standards Authority.
In its annual report on the GPhC’s performance, published on 24 September 2025, the PSA — which sets standards for all UK health regulators — said the GPhC “is still taking too long to process FtP cases, despite the efforts the GPhC has made this last year to reduce its caseload, including legacy cases”.
“We have escalated our concerns to the secretary of state for health and social care and [the House of Commons] health and social care committee chair,” it added.
The PSA acknowledged that the GPhC has implemented measures to reduce the time it takes to progress cases, which include:
- Appointing a new executive-level chief enforcement officer and deputy registrar to oversee the GPhC’s FtP improvement work and overall enforcement strategy;
- Establishing a new case action team to deal with cases from referral to investigation more swiftly;
- Restructuring teams and upskilling team members to undertake additional tasks;
- Allocating investigation lawyers to case teams;
- Increasing the number of hearing days.
“We note that these measures will take time to bed in and for improvements to be fully realised. During this review period, the GPhC acknowledged that timeliness data was likely to deteriorate further before getting better as it begins to close more of its aged cases,” the PSA said.
The report revealed that the number of open FtP cases over 52 weeks has reduced from 422 cases in 2023/2024 to 305 cases in 2024/2025.
“Although the number of cases over 156 weeks has slightly increased, the number of cases between 104 to 155 weeks has almost halved from 137 to 70, and the number of cases between 52 and 103 weeks has reduced from 181 to 126,” it said.
However, the PSA noted that while the GPhC has reduced its aged cases, there has been an increase in the end-to-end median time from referral to final FtP decision, from 149 weeks in 2023/2024 to 153 weeks in 2024/2025.
“We will continue to monitor the GPhC’s performance data as it continues to reduce its aged cases,” the PSA said.
In the assessment of a separate standard on equality, diversity and inclusion, the PSA said the regulator had met this but noted: “There are some gaps in the GPhC’s FtP guidance documents in that they do not make reference to allegations of racist and other discriminatory behaviour when assessing and investigating concerns. We will monitor what steps the GPhC takes to address this.”
Responding to the report, Duncan Rudkin, chief executive of the GPhC, said: “We are working hard to improve our FtP processes, and make investigations more streamlined and proportionate, so we are able to meet all of the PSA’s standards of good regulation.
“We have seen real improvements in productivity and timeliness for dealing with FtP investigations, and we are confident that this will continue. We recognise that further improvements are needed, and we are working hard to make these improvements as quickly as possible.”
Concerning the gaps in FtP guidance, Rudkin added: “As a regulator, we have a responsibility to make sure that our processes, policies and guidance are clear and that we take concerns about racism and discrimination seriously when they are raised with us.
“Building on recent changes to our hearings and outcomes guidance, we are updating our investigations and investigating committee guidance to strengthen our approach to these types of concerns.”
Dionne Spence, chief enforcement officer at the GPhC, commented: “We are taking forward a comprehensive improvement programme to fast track the progression and resolution of our older cases, and to improve the efficiency of how we manage our investigations and hearings.
“[The PSA’s report] highlights that we have continued to receive a higher than usual number of FtP referrals. We’ve seen a further 13% increase in referrals this year, and an overall increase of over 100% since 2021/2022. We have had to divert our limited resources to deal with this increase, which has made it even more challenging to reduce our backlog of cases,” she said.
“Despite the challenges we’re facing, we are continuing to make continued and sustained improvements; for example, in spite of the increasing volumes, the median time taken to reach an initial assessment decision has reduced from 5.7 weeks to 3.9 weeks in 2024/2025.”
