The Royal Pharmaceutical Society (RPS) has told a pharmacist who lodged a complaint of bullying with the professional leadership body that it will not tell her what decision it has reached once its investigations are over.

Hala Jawad, who alleged she was subjected to bullying and harassment on Twitter by former Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain president Steve Churton as she ran for election to the English Pharmacy Board last year, told ICP that although the RPS said it will tell her when it has made a decision, she is concerned she will never know what their verdict is.

“(They will) tell me when they reach a decision but not the nature of the decision. (It) seems crazy,” Jawad told ICP.

She has been so concerned at the amount of time the RPS is taking to reach a decision, having initially contacted its chief executive Paul Bennett on September 4 last year, that she contacted her local MP Crispin Blunt for support.

A caseworker assigned to her case by the Conservative MP got in touch with the RPS at the start of this month asking when its investigations will be concluded. The RPS told the caseworker it expected to finish its deliberations by the end of this month, nearly five months after Jawad originally contacted the RPS.

The professional leadership body told the caseworker that Jawad would not be notified about “the nature of the decision” which, under the RPS’s conduct scheme for members, would remain confidential to Churton, the chair of the RPS’s membership committee and, on an anonymised basis, its Assembly.

When the RPS was asked why it would not inform Jawad of its decision given the importance of transparency, the professional leadership body did not respond.