The General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC) is launching a new independent service to tackle its backlog of fitness-to-practise cases, the regulator’s chief enforcement officer has announced.
In a post shared on LinkedIn today, Dionne Spence said that after joining the GPhC in 2024, she “set out a plan to tackle our long-standing backlogs and delays, because nobody facing an investigation into their conduct or competence should be waiting years for an outcome”.
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“I am not and never will be comfortable with our historic performance in this area,” she added. “We needed to do better, but we also needed to think differently.”
In September, the GPhC’s annual report revealed that the regulator had received almost 10,000 concerns about pharmacy professionals, up almost 35% on the year before.
Spence said that “not every concern requires a formal regulatory investigation” but “every concern does deserve an opportunity to be heard and handled properly”.
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“Making a regulatory system better means being prepared to rethink how we do things,” she added. “And that’s exactly what we’re doing.”
In the LinkedIn post, Spence said she was “delighted to announce” that the GPhC has contracted with Nockolds Solicitors to launch an independent Pharmacy Concerns Resolution Service in January 2027.
The move comes “after a couple of years of development, a robust business case and the full support of our council”, she noted.
Read more: Black and Asian pharmacists ‘over-represented’ in GPhC concerns
She said the “nine-month proof of concept” aims to “test alternative approaches to handling concerns within the pharmacy sector, giving patients, the public, professionals and businesses access to a different route to resolution”.
“Will it solve our workload challenges overnight? No,” Spence said.
Read more: Less than 30% of pharmacy professionals feel GPhC ‘listens’
“But having worked with this team previously, I know that it is an important step towards removing non-regulatory concerns out of the council’s oversight, ensuring that we are able to focus resources on getting regulatory concerns resolved more proportionately, and reducing the emotional and financial toll that formal proceedings bring.”
Spence said the GPhC will hold a sector event next month to allow stakeholders to meet the teams and hear more, and a report of findings and recommendations from the service will be sent to the council next December.
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It comes after the GPhC revealed that Black and Asian pharmacists are “over-represented” in the concerns it receives, while there is an “under-representation” of White pharmacists.
And it follows a new survey revealing that less than 30% of pharmacists and pharmacy technicians feel listened to by the regulator when it comes to developing policies, standards and guidance.
