The General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC) met 17 out of 18 standards of good regulation in its 2025/26 annual performance review, the Professional Standards Authority for Health and Social Care (PSA) announced today.
But it is the eighth year in a row that the pharmacy regulator has failed standard 15, which covers the regulator’s process for “examining and investigating cases”.
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The PSA said the GPhC “continues to take too long to resolve fitness-to-practise (FtP) cases” and has written to the health secretary and the Health and Social Care Committee chair about the issue in line with its escalation policy.
The UK’s healthcare regulator oversight body said that since 2018/19, the “end-to-end median has increased each year” and the number of open older cases has “increased slightly this year following a significant fall last year”.
It added that the increase is “exclusively in cases aged between 52 and 103 weeks”.
“Real challenge”
GPhC chief executive Kathie Cashell said meeting standard 15 is a “real challenge” because the regulator has seen “significant increases on the number of concerns received each year”.
Earlier this month, the GPhC revealed that it received 9,928 concerns about pharmacy professionals between March 31, 2025, and March 31, 2026 – an increase of almost 35% compared to last year.
The PSA’s annual performance review covers July 1, 2025 to June 30, 2026, during which time the GPhC received 10,328 concerns about pharmacy professionals, a 39% increase on the previous year and the “fourth consecutive significant annual increase”.
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The GPhC met four of the PSA’s five FtP-related standards this year, with the PSA finding “strong assurance” in the “quality of investigations”, the “reasonableness of decisions”, “risk management processes” and the “support provided to people involved in cases”.
While it did not meet the standard relating to “the timely resolution of fitness to practise cases”, the GPhC had reduced the number of cases open over two years from 179 to 142, and cases open over three years down from 109 to 78.
The PSA said “more than 90% of concerns continue to be resolved at triage” and it found “no evidence that cases were being closed inappropriately”.
“Major priority”
GPhC chief enforcement officer Dionne Spence said addressing the timeliness of FtP case resolutions “remains a major priority” for the regulator, adding that it has introduced changes to “prioritise the most serious concerns and reduce our older caseload”.
These include increasing resources in its FtP teams, strengthening the triage function, introducing clearer acceptance criteria, “increasing decision-making capacity” and improving its hearing’s function.
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Spence also said the GPhC has set “ambitious targets for the coming year”, such as increasing hearings capacity “by 50%” and “resolving the majority of our very aged investigations”.
Cashell said the GPhC has made “sustained progress” in improving the timely handling of FtP cases, with cases “now being assessed within five weeks and most investigations being completed within 40 weeks”.
Read more: Exclusive: Complaints made against the GPhC in 2025/26
She added that the GPhC is “realistic about the scale of the remaining challenge”, and improvements show that changes it has made to assessing and managing concerns “are already delivering good results”.
The PSA said the GPhC demonstrated a “strong commitment to embedding equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) across its regulatory functions” and took “positive steps to address previously identified gaps”.
The GPhC updated references to “racist and other discriminatory behaviour” in its FtP guidance and strengthened “EDI expectations in education and training standards”, including establishing work on addressing “differential attainment across pharmacy education and training”.
Read more: ‘Significant rise’: GPhC received almost 10,000 concerns this year
The PSA considered the GPhC’s updated internal guidance on Islamophobia and antisemitism as an “example of good practice”.
It noted that stakeholders described the GPhC as “constructive, responsive, collaborative and willing to listen to concerns” in its engagement activities.
And it said the GPhC continued its response to “emerging risks and changes across pharmacy” including safe online medicines supply, guidance and reviews on “emerging areas of practice”, consulting on new pharmacy technician, superintendent pharmacist and responsible pharmacist standards, and “supporting the introduction of pharmacist independent prescribing”.
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Cashell said it is “encouraging” that the PSA highlighted the GPhC’s “strong performance in areas such as equality, diversity and inclusion, stakeholder engagement, and the quality of our regulatory decision-making”.
Spence added that the GPhC will “shortly be testing the feasibility of an independent pharmacy concerns resolution service”, as the sector currently does not have an “independent route for consumer concerns that do not require regulatory action”.
“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,” she said.
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It comes after C+D exclusively revealed the reasons behind the corporate complaints made against the GPhC this year.
And it follows the GPhC revealing that it took regulatory action on almost three-quarters of the 66 whistleblowing disclosures it received in 2025/26.
