Please note: This article was updated after the GPhC made a correction to its announcement.
“Following a successful recruitment process, Lynsey Cleland has joined the GPhC…as our new chief standards officer,” the pharmacy regulator this week (June 9) revealed.
Cleland has previously served in “a number of senior roles” at the regulator including as director for Scotland for several years, it added.
She worked as a pharmacist “in the first part of her career” but is no longer on the pharmacist register, according to the GPhC.
Read more: GPhC and NHSE appoint first joint pharmacy technician fellow
“Since leaving the GPhC in 2019, [Cleland] has held a series of senior executive roles within the Scottish health and care system” – most recently as Healthcare Improvement Scotland’s quality assurance and regulation director, it said.
Cleland brings “a wealth of regulatory, system leadership and public assurance experience”, it added.
“A broad portfolio”
During her one-year fixed term contract at the GPhC, Cleland will be responsible for “overseeing a broad and impactful portfolio across a range of teams”, the regulator said.
Her work will span “pharmacy education and training, pharmacy policy and standards”, it added.
The role also covers “regulation reform, equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) and external communications”, it said.
Read more: GPhC can’t achieve ‘anything useful’ alone, Rudkin admits
It comes as the GPhC and NHS England (NHSE) appointed Olivia Musson as their first joint national pharmacy technician fellow in April.
At the time, GPhC chief pharmacy officer Roz Gittins said that Musson would contribute to the GPhC’s “work to support and empower the pharmacy technician profession”.
This will include the GPhC’s new standards for the initial education and training of pharmacy technicians, she said.
Read more: GPhC to spend £300k on legal fees as FtP performance slides to red
Meanwhile at the annual Sigma conference last month, the body’s chief executive Duncan Rudkin admitted that “the regulator, acting alone, can’t achieve very much of anything useful”.
“The days are long gone…where the pharmacy regulator sits on its own and achieves useful, meaningful change”, he said at the time.
“We need to work with other…pharmacy leadership bodies, representatives and trade bodies” – but the GPhC also plans to collaborate with a “wide range of other regulators”, he added.
