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The Professional Standards Authority (PSA) wrote to the health secretary Yvette Cooper last month to air its concerns over the General Pharmaceutical Council’s (GPhC) repeated failure to resolve fitness-to-practise (FtP) cases in a timely fashion.

The PSA, which oversees 10 statutory UK health and social care regulators, told Cooper (pictured) the GPhC had failed to meet its standard relating to the “timeliness of investigations” since 2018-19. In its latest performance review of the GPhC, covering the period July 1, 2025, to June 30, 2026, the PSA said pharmacy’s regulator had met 17 of 18 standards overall.

The GPhC met all five general standards relating to guidance and standards, education and training and registration but failed to meet all five FtP standards, fulfilling four.

In its letter to Cooper on September 23, the PSA said: “The GPhC still takes too long to resolve FtP cases and therefore has not met our standard relating to the quality and timeliness of investigations. Although this is one standard out of 18, it does represent a critical part of the work of the GPhC in protecting the public.

“Delays to FTP cases also have negative impacts on registrants, complainants and witnesses and present a risk to public confidence. The GPhC has not met this standard for FtP timeliness since 2018-19.”

The PSA said the GPhC “acknowledges there is still more work to do” and insisted it would “continue to monitor the GPhC’s ongoing programme of improvement”.

GPhC: Improving timeliness FtP cases is major priority 

Reacting to the PSA’s findings, the GPhC’s chief enforcement officer Dionne Spence said: “We recognise that we need to continue improving the timeliness of our fitness to practise processes and this remains a major priority for us.”

Spence said the GPhC has implemented “a wide-ranging programme of improvements” which include increasing resources in its FtP teams and strengthening its “triage function”.

She also said the GPhC has introduced “clearer acceptance criteria, increasing decision-making capacity” to improve its “hearing's function”.

“These changes are helping us prioritise the most serious concerns and reduce our older caseload,” Spence added, insisting the GPhC will soon test “an independent pharmacy concerns resolution service”.

“Unlike many other health and care sectors, pharmacy currently has no independent route for consumer concerns that do not require regulatory action,” Spence said.

“We believe addressing that gap could improve the experience of patients and members of the public, while allowing us to focus more effectively on concerns that raise significant public protection issues.”

Spence said one of the GPhC’s goals is to increase hearings capacity by 50 per cent and resolve the “majority of (its) very aged investigations”.

Image: www.parliament.uk