PSA publishes Annual Report and Accounts for 2025/26
09 Jul 2026
The Professional Standards Authority for Health and Social Care (PSA) has published its Annual Report and Accounts for 2025/26, highlighting a productive year of work to protect patients, service users and the public through improved regulation and registration of health and social care professionals.
During the year, the PSA developed a new set of combined Standards for regulators and Accredited Registers following a review of existing standards, a call for evidence, consultation and stakeholder engagement. The Standards, published in March 2026, place greater emphasis on governance, professional suitability and collaboration and came into effect on 1 July 2026.
Towards the end of the year, the PSA published its Strategic Plan for 2026-2029, setting out how it will encourage a more preventative approach to regulation.
During 2025/26:
- fitness to practise timeliness continues to be a major issue for seven of the 10 regulators the PSA oversees
- we completed 24 fitness to practise appeals under our Section 29 powers, with 21 appeals, or 88%, either upheld or settled
- our Accredited Registers programme continues to grow with approximately 135,000 practitioners across 28 registers – an increase of around 7% in practitioner numbers over the previous year
- we published Lessons from meeting our EDI Standard for regulators - good practice guide
- we also published Appealing fitness to practise decisions: the year in focus – our first report to collate data, key statistics and insights from our Section 29 work
- and we published research on Barriers and enablers to making a complaint.
We launched an updated version of Right-touch regulation in October 2025, reinforcing its role as a practical framework for proportionate, targeted and preventative regulation.
“This has been a productive year for the PSA. Our work continues to focus on protecting patients, service users and the public by improving regulation and registration across health and social care.
“As health and social care continues to change rapidly, regulation must be targeted, proportionate and preventative. Our new Standards and Strategic Plan will help us support continuous improvement, strengthen collaboration and ensure regulation plays its part in a wider system focused on safety and quality.”
The report also highlights the PSA’s continued work across the four countries of the UK, including Board meetings, stakeholder engagement and events taking place in Northern Ireland and Scotland, and a joint seminar with the Welsh Government.
The PSA continued to promote equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) across regulators and Accredited Registers, supporting organisations to embed EDI in their work and share learning on what makes regulation and registration fairer and more inclusive.
Over the next year, we will continue to play an active role in the reform of professional regulation, sharing our expertise and evidence to support changes that make regulation more agile, consistent and focused on public protection.
ENDS
Professional Standards Authority for Health and Social Care
Contact: media@professionalstandards.org.uk
Read the full report or see a summary of the key statistics.
Notes to the editor
- The Professional Standards Authority for Health and Social Care (PSA) is the UK’s oversight body for the regulation of people working in health and social care. Our statutory remit, independence and expertise underpin our commitment to the safety of patients and service-users, and to the protection of the public. There are 10 organisations that regulate health professionals in the UK and social workers in England by law. We audit their performance and review their decisions on practitioners’ fitness to practise.
- We also accredit and set standards for organisations holding registers of health and care practitioners not regulated by law. We collaborate with all of these organisations to improve standards. We share good practice, knowledge and our right-touch regulation expertise.
- We also conduct and promote research on regulation. We monitor policy developments in the UK and internationally, providing guidance to governments and stakeholders. Through our UK and international consultancy, we share our expertise and broaden our regulatory insights.
- Our values are – integrity, transparency, respect, fairness and teamwork – and we strive to ensure that they are at the core of our work.