GPhC receives over 9,500 fitness-to-practise concerns in a year
The General Pharmaceutical Council is now receiving more than 9,500 fitness-to-practise concerns annually, a 77% rise since 2023/24. That scale of increase puts the regulator's investigation processes under serious strain and has direct implications for anyone working in or entering the profession.
What happened
The GPhC has disclosed that it receives over 9,500 fitness-to-practise concerns each year. Compared with figures from 2023/24, that represents a 77% increase — a rise that, by any measure, is steep.
Fitness-to-practise concerns can be raised by patients, employers, other healthcare professionals, or the police. They cover a wide range: dispensing errors, dishonesty, drug misuse, criminal convictions, and conduct that falls short of professional standards. When a concern is received, the GPhC must triage it, investigate where appropriate, and decide whether it warrants a formal hearing.
A near-doubling in caseload over roughly two years means the regulator is processing a substantially larger volume of cases than its systems were originally built to handle. The GPhC has acknowledged it is committed to improving how quickly those investigations are completed.
Why it matters
For anyone approaching the end of their training year, the fitness-to-practise system is more than an abstract regulatory mechanism. It is the process by which the GPhC protects the public — and the same process that governs your own registration once you're on the register.
The 77% increase is a number worth sitting with. It's not a marginal uptick; it points to a profession under considerable pressure. Workload in pharmacy has intensified across all sectors. The conditions that lead to errors, to boundary breaches, or to health problems among registrants don't disappear because someone is newly qualified. In some respects, they get sharper.
Understanding how fitness-to-practise works also matters practically. As a registered pharmacist, you may one day be asked to raise a concern about a colleague, or you may find yourself the subject of one. Knowing what triggers an investigation, what the GPhC looks for, and what the likely stages are is part of being a professional, not just an exam topic.
The sheer volume of concerns being received also has a secondary effect: timeliness. When caseloads rise this fast, investigations take longer. That has consequences for registrants under investigation, who may be unable to work normally while a case is unresolved, and for the public, who expect concerns to be handled promptly.
GPhC exam relevance
The GPhC Common Registration Assessment tests candidates on professional standards, and fitness-to-practise sits squarely within that territory. The GPhC's own standards — including the Standards for Pharmacy Professionals — set out what is expected of registrants and form the framework against which concerns are assessed.
You're expected to understand the duty to raise concerns, the concept of fitness to practise, and the difference between a performance issue and a conduct issue. The assessment doesn't ask you to recall case law, but it does present scenarios where you need to recognise when a concern should be raised and what the appropriate course of action is.
The kinds of situations that generate fitness-to-practise concerns in practice — a dispensing error not disclosed, a colleague working impaired, a patient interaction that crosses a professional boundary — are exactly the kinds of scenarios the assessment uses to test professional judgement. The rise in concern volumes reflects the real-world complexity of those situations, and working through them in exam preparation builds the same thinking you'll use in practice.
One area worth reviewing is the GPhC's guidance on raising concerns. The Standards for Pharmacy Professionals (standard 8) require you to speak up when you have concerns about patient safety or the behaviour of a colleague. That obligation exists from day one of registration. The growing caseload the GPhC is managing suggests that more registrants and members of the public are acting on that obligation — which, however difficult it may feel in practice, is what the system is designed to encourage.
Also worth knowing: the GPhC can receive concerns about any registrant — pharmacists, pharmacy technicians, and pharmacy students on a GPhC-accredited course. Pre-registration trainee pharmacists are not yet on the register, but once you sit your assessment and register, the full fitness-to-practise framework applies immediately.
What's next
The GPhC's ability to process 9,500-plus concerns in a timely way will be something to watch over the coming year. If investigation timelines lengthen, there may be calls for additional resource or structural changes to how the regulator triages and handles cases.
For you as someone approaching registration, there are a few concrete things to do now.
Read the GPhC's Standards for Pharmacy Professionals if you haven't done so recently. They're the reference point for everything the fitness-to-practise process measures registrants against. Pay particular attention to standards 6 (act with honesty and integrity), 7 (respect and maintain the person's confidentiality and privacy), and 8 (speak up when you have concerns).
Look at the GPhC's published fitness-to-practise decisions on its website. These are real cases, with the facts and outcomes set out. Reading a handful of them gives you a much clearer sense of what kinds of behaviour the regulator treats seriously and what mitigating factors tend to matter. You don't need to read dozens — five or six cases across different categories will shift how you think about the scenarios in the assessment.
Think about your own practice now, during your training year. The habits you build around documentation, disclosure of errors, and escalating concerns are the habits you'll carry into registration. A dispensing error that is disclosed promptly and handled professionally rarely becomes a fitness-to-practise matter. The same error, covered up, often does.
The 77% increase in concerns tells a story about a profession under pressure and a public that is more willing to raise issues. That's not a reason for anxiety. It's a reason to be clear about what good professional conduct looks like — and to practise it from the start.
Source: Chemist+Druggist — https://www.chemistanddruggist.co.uk/news/regulation/gphc-receiving-over-9500-fitness-to-practise-concerns-in-a-year-FZMXSMXAHRGFVAUSZY7QXKLOUE/