A C+D investigation has uncovered details of the complaints lodged with the watchdog about the General Pharmaceutical Council's (GPhC) processes in recent years.

Concerns about pharmacist welfare, fitness-to-practise sanctions, and whistleblowing were all raised with the Professional Standards Authority (PSA) in the last five years.

The body has written to the GPhC on three occasions in five years, to ensure the council responds to concerns raised and asking it to answer to individuals.

A GPhC spokesperson said the regulator takes complaints seriously and stressed it has a clear process for reviewing and responding to complaints and considering whether any lessons can be learnt. 

"We believe that is important that we are transparent about the number and type of complaints we receive about our work," they added. 

Performance review

The PSA is an independent body that oversees the registers of the GPhC and eight other regulated health and care professions, and reports on their work to Parliament.

The authority is not a “complaint handling body”, but does “log concerns that people raise for consideration during our performance review process”, the watchdog states in response to a request under the Freedom of Information Act, submitted by C+D.

The details given to C+D reveal that the watchdog has logged more than 30 concerns about the GPhC between April 2011 and June 2016.

Many of the concerns related to the GPhC’s fitness-to-practise procedures. Several were from registrants about “harsh” sanctions and registration decisions. One GPhC registrant had a concern as they were “unhappy with [the] handling of an ongoing fitness-to-practise” case, and another said they approached the PSA “wishing to appeal a fitness-to-practise decision”. One concern dealt with a “welfare concern” regarding a pharmacist.

Several inquiries have already been logged this year – including concerns about the GPhC’s response and approach to complaints, and another from a registered member “about [the] treatment of a ‘whistleblower’”.

In the same years that concerns were logged about “harsh” fitness-to-practise sanctions, others were also logged regarding the regulator’s decision not to pursue a complaint about a registrant, the investigation revealed. The PSA also received a complaint from a member of the public after the GPhC decided against conducting a fitness-to-practise investigation.

The body has the power to appeal a regulator’s decisions to the High Court or the Court of Session in Scotland, or direct a regulator to change its rules – although it has never done so. But the PSA says it does not have the power to investigate complaints about regulators “as this part of legislation has not been put into practice”. 

What do you make of the concerns? 

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