Regulator misses fitness-to-practise timeliness standard for sixth year in a row

The General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC) has failed to meet a regulatory standard on the timeliness of its fitness-to-practise (FtP) system for the sixth year in a row.

In its annual report on the performance of the GPhC, published on 25 September 2024, the Professional Standards Authority (PSA) — which sets standards for all UK health regulators, including the GPhC — said that the pharmacy regulator did not meet its standard for dealing with FtP cases in a “timely manner”.

The PSA’s performance review for 2023/2024 said: “The GPhC has not met the standard relating to timeliness of investigations since 2017/2018 and the GPhC is still taking too long to progress FtP investigations.

“There has been deterioration in our three key measures of performance on timeliness this year,” it added.

The PSA acknowledged that there had been a “30% year-on-year increase in FtP referrals received [by the GPhC] since 2022”.

“The increase in referrals has predominantly involved low-level service complaints from members of the public, which do not constitute concerns about FTP,” the report said.

“The GPhC put measures in place to deal with the increase in referrals received this year and is looking at how best to manage this moving forward.”

The performance review also noted that the GPhC had introduced several measures to improve its FtP timeliness, including:

• Appointing a new executive-level chief enforcement officer and deputy registrar to oversee the FtP improvement work and overall enforcement strategy;
• Creating a new case action team to deal with cases from referral to investigation more swiftly;
• Allocating dedicated investigation lawyers into case teams and piloting more clinical input through a seconded inspector.

However, the report added: “During this review period, the GPhC has reported in its council papers that timeliness data [were] likely to deteriorate further (as was the case) before getting better as it looked to progress a significant number of complex cases.

“The data show that timeliness has not improved this year and it is still too early to see the impact of some measures the GPhC has introduced.”

In 2023/2024, the PSA said that the GPhC had 181 FtP cases on file that had been open for more than one year; 137 that had been open for more than two years; and 104 cases that had not been closed more than three years since they were first filed.

In September 2023, the PSA said it had written to Steven Barclay, then health and social care secretary, when it had reported that the GPhC failed to meet all of its FtP standards for the fifth year in a row.

In August 2024, a spokesperson for the PSA told The Pharmaceutical Journal that it had “met regularly with Department of Health and Social Care officials to discuss our oversight of the regulator and backlog concerns”.

Responding to the latest report, Duncan Rudkin, chief executive of the GPhC, said: “Ensuring a fair, proportionate, and timely resolution of FtP concerns remains the highest priority for everyone at the GPhC.  

“We recognise that there is some way to go but we are now seeing positive and sustained improvements in productivity and timeliness for dealing with cases, and we are confident that this will continue. 

“We are pleased that the PSA have noted that despite the challenges faced, including a 30% year-on-year increase in FtP referrals, we have demonstrated our ability to manage and mitigate potential risk through our interim order process, as well as retaining all other standards, including those in relation to accessibility and the fairness and quality of our decision making.  

“We are also making significant reductions in our overall caseload.”