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The Professional Standards Authority (PSA) has said the General Pharmaceutical Council met 17 out of 18 of its good regulation standards in 2024-25 but again failed to complete its fitness-to-practise investigations in a timely fashion.

In its report covering the period July 1, 2024 to June 30, 2025, the PSA said pharmacy’s regulator again failed to meet standard 15 covering the “timeliness of fitness-to-practise investigations”, just as it failed to do in the same period during the previous year.

Outgoing GPhC chief executive Duncan Rudkin said it was “working hard to improve” its fitness-to-practise processes “and make investigations more streamlined and proportionate so we are able to meet all of the PSA’s standards of good regulation”.

“We have seen real improvements in productivity and timeliness for dealing with fitness-to-practise investigations and we are confident that this will continue,” he said.

“We recognise that further improvements are needed and we are working hard to make these improvements as quickly as possible. Our Council will continue to hold us to account as we work towards achieving the standard for timeliness, as well as continuing to meet all other standards for good regulation.”

PSA: GPhC is still taking too long to process FtP cases

On the GPhC’s failure to meet standard 15 “because it is still taking too long to process cases”, the PSA said: “We acknowledge the GPhC continues to take steps aimed at improving performance in this area and the number of referrals it receives is increasing.”

In its report, the PSA said the number of open cases over 52 weeks had “reduced significantly” from 422 cases last year to 305 this year but the number of cases over 156 weeks increased from 104 to 109.

The number of cases open between 104 to 155 weeks fell from 137 to 70 and the number of cases open between 52 and 103 weeks fell from 181 to 126.

The GPhC’s chief enforcement officer Dionne Spence said the regulator was fast-tracking “the progression and resolution” of older cases and working to improve “the efficiency” of how it manages its investigations and hearings.

The PSA said it has updated the health secretary Wes Streeting and Health and Social Care Committee chair Layla Moran with its concerns and will monitor the steps the GPhC takes to address the issue. 

The PSA also said the GPhC “continues to be active in relation to equality, diversity and inclusion” (EDI) and “continues to perform strongly against the majority of the indicators for this standard”.

The PSA said: “We saw examples of good practice in the creation of a council anti-racism champions working group, the implementation of its diversity action plan for the council member recruitment and the work carried out to collect and analyse EDI data from fitness-to-practise complainants and make improvements to its processes.”

However, the PSA said there were “some gaps” in the GPhC’s fitness-to-practise guidance documents “in that they do not make reference to allegations of racist and other discriminatory behaviour when assessing and investigating concerns”.