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Professional Standards Authority Annual Report and Accounts 2024/25
10 Jul 2025
A message from PSA's Chair and Chief Executive
We are pleased to introduce this annual report for 2024/25. This year we have continued our work to protect patients, service users and the public by improving the regulation and registration of health and social care professionals. We support high standards in regulation and registration through our performance reviews, assessments of fitness to practise cases (section 29), the Accredited Registers programme, and policy and communications functions. We have maintained our commitment to supporting the reform of professional regulation and to promoting equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI).
We oversee the work of 10 statutory bodies that regulate health and social care professionals. In undertaking our oversight role, we strive to strike a balance between scrutiny on the one hand, and advice and guidance on the other. During 2024/25 we assessed all the regulators against our new EDI standard. We have increased our expectations of what regulators should be doing to promote EDI and were pleased to see some significant improvements in performance and examples of good practice. Towards the end of 2024/25 we launched a consultation on changes to all our standards for regulators and Accredited Registers, and expect to implement changes in these standards from the beginning of 2026/27.
In our reviews of regulators’ performance over the year, we have found that they have generally performed well against the standards we set. Across all the regulators an average of 92% of the standards were met and three of the regulators met all the standards. The Pharmaceutical Society of Northern Ireland (PSNI) was a particular concern, only meeting 11 of the 18 standards. Some improvements in performance were noted at the end of its performance review year and we will be monitoring this situation very closely in 2025/26. Seven of the regulators did not meet Standard 15 of the Standards of Good Regulation. This is a fitness to practise standard and the primary reason for it not being met is that it is taking too long to complete cases. This is not good for regulators, registrants, and patients and service users. In July 2024 the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) published an independent review into the culture of the organisation, which highlighted numerous serious issues. Two further independent reviews of the NMC are expected to be published in summer 2025. The PSA set up an independent oversight group to monitor the improvements needed at the NMC and extended the performance review year by six months, with the 2023/24 report for the NMC being expected to be published in June 2025.
In reviewing regulators’ decisions about whether individuals on their registers are fit to practise, we find that the bulk of cases are managed to a high standard, with findings and sanctions that protect the public appropriately. However, every decision is important and there is room for further improvement. During 2024/25, 29 appeals under our section 29 powers were completed. All but one of these appeals were either upheld or settled. One appeal was dismissed – although one of our grounds of appeal was upheld, overall, the judge did not agree that the sanction was insufficient to protect the public. During 2024/25 we also shared learning points with the regulators from our reviews to support improvements to their processes.
The Accredited Registers programme has an important part to play now and in the future, providing assurance for the public in relation to unregulated health and social care roles. The programme now covers approximately 130,000 practitioners across 29 registers. We introduced an EDI standard for the registers in 2024/25. In 2025/26 we will be reviewing the position of safeguarding checks in the light of the government review of the disclosure and barring regime.
In October 2024 we held a successful conference on learning from research in regulation. We also began a review of our principles-based framework Right-touch regulation, the new version of which is expected to be published in October 2025. During 2024/25 we also hosted several symposia on sexual misconduct in health and social care, completed a piece of commissioned work for the General Teaching Council for Scotland (GTCS) and updated our website. We continue to be concerned about harms caused to people having non-surgical cosmetic interventions in the UK and have encouraged the UK governments to bring forward changes in regulation and registration to mitigate the risks of harm in these procedures.
We have had several changes to our Board in 2024/25. Three long-serving members completed their second and final terms and we appointed three new members during the year. We also appointed a new Associate Board member in May 2024. Our remit covers all four countries of the UK. As part of our commitment to working effectively with the respective governments, and to provide opportunities for stakeholder engagement, we hold Board meetings and seminars across the four nations of the UK on a revolving basis. We held stakeholder events in Scotland and Northern Ireland during 2024/25 and also held a joint seminar with the Welsh Government in March 2025. We held our Board meeting in July 2024 in Cymru/Wales.
To conclude, it has been a successful and productive year for the Professional Standards Authority. As we look forward to 2025/26 and beyond, we remain as committed as ever to improving regulation and registration to protect the public.