For a second year in a row, the General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC) is failing to adhere to good standards of regulation in its fitness to practise.

The Professional Standards Authority’s (PSA) review of the General Pharmaceutical Council performance against set standards of good regulation concluded that the GPhC failed to meet fitness to practise standards relating to timeliness, customer service and transparency and fairness.

Read more about the PSA’s role in fitness to practise

In particular, in terms of timeliness of the GPhC’s fitness to practise process, median time frames have increased for all three of the key stages of the fitness to practise process including an increase in the number of cases open beyond a year.

However, perhaps of more concern to pharmacists is the GPhC performance in relation to transparency and fairness.  Strong concerns remain about the GPhC’s triage process.  Evidence showed that criteria used to make triage decisions were, in some cases, based on criteria which were not described in the GPhC’s own guidance.

Decisions made by the GPhC Investigating Committee (IC) “decisions lacked reasoning” on a number of fronts, namely the reasons for deciding:

• there was a realistic prospect of impairment being found
• the behaviour could not be addressed by advice
• a warning was considered to be the proportionate outcome