The General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC) has upgraded its fitness-to-practise (FtP) performance from red to amber as it tested itself against its “new objectives” for 2024/25, it reported this week (September 10) in its board assurance framework report for the first quarter of 2024/25.

Speaking at the September council meeting yesterday (September 12), chief enforcement officer Dionne Spence told the council that it was “unusual” to see the regulator rate “amber” for its fitness-to-practise.

Spence conceded that this improved performance partly followed the regulator’s decision to set itself “revised objectives” for its FtP performance in the year, which has been plagued by a chronic backlog of open cases.

 

Hit “reset”

 

While the regulator still aims by March 2025 to reduce its total open caseload to less than 450 and to reduce the share of cases open for more than one year to 35%, it reported in its council papers that it has “reset” its goal for closing cases open for more than two years after its first quarter.

Spence told C+D yesterday (September 12) that the regulator had “changed” its goal of reducing the share of cases open for more than two years from 8% to 15% by the end of March 2025 after it “inadvertently included all open cases in the calculation” it used to establish this goal.

Read more: FtP concerns reach ‘record high’ as GPhC performance remains in the red

Spence told the council that the miscalculation in setting the goal “meant that trying to achieve 8% in one year was unattainable”. 

Instead, the GPhC would aim to achieve a reduction in the share of two year cases to 8% of total as a “two year objective”, she said. 

 

FtP “improving”

 

Nevertheless, Spence told C+D that the regulator's FtP “performance is improving”.

She told the council that the regulator was “well on track to get our outstanding caseload down to below 450 [by March 2025] from a starting point of 546 at the beginning of the year” with the regulator scoring a green rating on this measure in its first quarter report.

The regulator reported that the number of cases open for more than one year had reduced to 53% at the end of the first quarter from 58%. While this missed its quarterly target of 52%, the performance was within the regulator’s “tolerance” and rated amber in its board report.

Read more: GPhC appoints new FtP and pharmacy inspections executive leads

And the regulator has managed to reduce the share of cases open for more than two years from 30% at the start of the year to 25% at the end of the first quarter. With the “reset” of this goal, this meant that the regulator achieved a green rating for this measure in its report.

The first quarterly board report said that the FtP division’s programme to improve its performance was “progressing well,” with the regulator seeing “positive and sustained improvements in productivity and timeliness”.

 

The regulatory reformer

 

The GPhC’s ability to process its FtP caseload has been an ongoing source of concern for its regulator, the Professional Standards Authority (PSA). 

In September last year, the PSA alerted the health secretary to the “serious and ongoing delays” in clearing its FtP backlog

When Spence joined the regulator in January, she assumed responsibility for the GPhC’s “enforcement action", including “overseeing and enhancing” its FtP processes. 

Read more: FtP concerns from public spike as pharmacies see ‘increased pressures’

At her previous role as director of regulatory operations at the General Optical Council, Spence was “pivotal” in that regulator “meeting all [of the PSA’s] 18 Standards of Good Regulation for the first time in over ten years”, the GPhC said at her appointment.

In June, C+D reported that the GPhC’s FtP department received a record 5,477 concerns in the 2023/24 year, an increase of 31% year-on-year.

In September 2023, the regulator reported that the number of open cases was “the highest it has ever been”, with a backlog of 701 cases open at the initial assessment stage.