Practice made perfect
The Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC) is a UK-wide body that was set up to protect the public by ensuring health and care professionals are fit to practise, i.e. they have the knowledge and skills to practise their profession safely and effectively. The HCPC delivers this important function in two key ways. First, they keep and maintain a register of professionals (also known as registrants) who are allowed to practise because they meet the professional, health, behaviour and training standards required of them. Secondly, they impose sanctions on, or remove from the register, individuals who fail to meet these standards. They do this through a fitness to practise process.
Below we provide a brief overview of the HCPC and explain what can be involved in HCPC fitness to practise proceedings. If you require expert advice and assistance on a professional regulation or fitness to practise issue, no matter the stage of the process, please contact our specialist lawyers. We will provide the legal support you need to protect your reputation and livelihood.
The HCPC currently regulates the following 16 professions:
The HCPC is under the broad obligation to establish and keep under review the standards of conduct, performance and ethics expected of these professionals. It must also investigate allegations that a registrant’s fitness to practice is impaired. This involves assessing whether concerns about a registrant, usually raised by service users, members of the public or colleagues, warrant further inquiry, and if so, opening a case and commencing an investigation.
Once the HCPC receives a concern or complaint, it has the right to require the disclosure of any relevant information about the registrant and circumstances surrounding a complaint. Both the information gathered and a draft of the allegation will be sent to the registrant, who is given 28 days to respond. After this period, the Investigating Committee Panel, usually made up of three people (including one professional and a lay person), meets in private to examine whether the allegation is likely to be proved.
The Investigating Committee Panel has three options open to it. It can decide that there is no case to answer and the matter isn’t taken any further, it can decide that more information is needed or it can decide there is a case to answer. If the latter, the case will be passed to another Panel for a final hearing. There is no right of appeal against an Investigating Committee Panel decision, although it may be possible to apply for a judicial review if the processes leading to the decision were unlawful.
The final hearing Panel has various powers at its disposal once it’s made its decision. It can order:
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