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A pharmacy technician who was found by the General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC) to have deliberately concealed she was under police investigation for common assault and faced criminal proceedings while completing an application to renew her registration has been suspended for 10 weeks.

A GPhC fitness-to-practise committee principal hearing last Tuesday (June 16) found Johnesia Francis answered “no” to a question on the application form on May 19, 2023, that asked if she was or had ever been “under investigation by a regulatory body (other than the GPhC) or criminal enforcement authority (e.g. police or NHS Counter Fraud Service) in the British Islands or elsewhere”.

That was despite the fact that police went to her home in July 2022 and interviewed her under caution in September that year. Francis was charged with a criminal offence on May 8, 2023, but failed to disclose any of this 11 days later when she filled in her revalidation form.

She was convicted at Snaresbrook Crown Court for common assault on August 2, 2023. Francis did not complete a fitness-to-practise declaration form until June 24, 2024, when she told the GPhC about her conviction.

The committee found that between May 8, 2023, and June 23, 2024, she failed to declare that conviction as well as the police investigation and criminal proceedings.

The committee contended Francis had acted dishonestly because she knew she was required to disclose information to the GPhC relating to fitness-to-practise, criminal investigations and convictions within seven days.

Francis admitted failing to make declarations but denied acting dishonestly. In its report, the committee noted her claim that she had “no recollection of events from April 2022 and for several months after”.

“She recalled a little of being charged but told the committee that she had not realised that she was under a criminal investigation,” the report said.

“She did recall completing the form but did not think that there was a criminal case to disclose. She disagreed that she knew that the information that she had not disclosed related to a criminal investigation or offence or conviction. 

“She also disputed that she had failed to disclose it in order to prevent it affecting her returning to the register.”

However, the committee found Francis’s “explanation was not credible” and insisted it was “not persuaded that she was unaware that she was under investigation or facing proceedings or convicted and sentenced”.

The committee also said it was “not satisfied” that she “had so much going on in her private life that she would have been overwhelmed and unable to understand the importance of declaring the criminal case”.

“She was an intelligent and experienced registrant,” it said in its report. “The completion of the form was done within the same timescale as she was going through the police investigation and court processes. The questions were direct, clear and required simple yes/no answers.”

Finding her dishonesty, having repeatedly withheld information from the GPhC, amounted to misconduct, the committee said: “This was seriously reprehensible conduct. It could not be said to be the result of a temporary lapse in judgment, inadvertence or oversight.”

Handing down the 10-week suspension with a review, the committee said “such conduct would be regarded as deplorable by fellow practitioners and that a finding of misconduct is appropriate and necessary in the circumstances”.

The committee also noted a “lack of any meaningful reflection and little information about her insight” and was not satisfied there was no risk of repetition “because it saw little or no evidence that she appreciated the impact of her misconduct on the public interest and on her profession and its reputation”.

It found Francis’s fitness-to-practise was impaired on public interest grounds.