The General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC) says it recognises that its regulatory performance, fitness to practise (FtP) processes and consistency are not up to scratch in its new strategic plan.
The 2025-2030 plan, launched at a parliamentary event attended by pharmacy minister Stephen Kinnock today (June 18), “identified three strategic aims” for the regulator.
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They included empowering pharmacists and pharmacy technicians, protecting patients and the public, and building “a skilled, agile and inclusive organization”, the GPhC said.
But it admitted that organisational flaws could hinder progress on the targets.
Charge fees and punish
“We recognise that improvements are needed in our regulatory performance,” the GPhC admitted.
“We also understand that we are often perceived as adversarial,” it added.
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“Too many pharmacists and pharmacy technicians seeing the regulator as a body that is there just to charge them fees and punish them if they fail.
“We aim to become a more effective, responsive and forward-looking regulator,” it said.
“Proportionate” FtPs
The GPhc also admitted problems within its regulatory processes.
The report said it aimed to make its “FtP processes” more “streamlined and proportionate”.
It also highlighted “ensuring financial sustainability” as a “key” challenge for the body.
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The regulator also said it faces “challenges with the consistency, quality assurance, and coordination of our processes, systems, and data flows”.
“By overcoming these challenges, we can strengthen public confidence and ensure we are well placed to support pharmacy professionals in an evolving healthcare landscape,” it said.
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It added that an imminent “delivery plan” will explain how the regulator will “turn [its] strategy into action”.
“It will set out the programmes of work, key outputs and milestones that will guide our progress as well as the metrics we will monitor to measure the outcomes and impact of our strategy,” it said.
GPhC “can’t achieve very much alone”
The plan comes after the GPhC’s chief executive Duncan Rudkin last month admitted that “the regulator, acting alone, can’t achieve very much of anything useful” to delegates of the annual Sigma conference.
“The days are long gone…where the pharmacy regulator sits on its own and achieves useful, meaningful change,” he said at the time.
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The new plan echoed Rudkin, saying that the body aims “to take a comprehensive and systematic approach to working in partnership with others”.
Meanwhile in February, the GPhC allotted an extra £300,000 to legal fees as part of an overall spend of £700,000 in its 2025-2026 budget to tackle its chronic backlog of open investigation cases.
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At the time, the regulator said that “a build-up of legacy cases post-COVID, a large volume of complex cases, increasing volumes of incoming concerns and the changing nature of concerns” had affected its ability to meet investigation standards.
It came as the GPhC launched a consultation about proposals for a 6% increase in the annual registration fees for pharmacists, pharmacy technicians and pharmacy owners from September 2025.
