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PSA publishes its annual report for 2024/2025

10 Jul 2025

The Professional Standards Authority for Health and Social Care (PSA) has published its Annual Report and Accounts for 2024/25. The report highlights the PSA’s work overseeing health and social care regulation and registration across the UK and sets out how the PSA has carried out its statutory duties during 2024/25.

PSA CEO, Alan Clamp, said:

“Another very busy and productive year for the PSA. We continue to operate - as do the statutory regulators and Accredited Registers and their registrants - in a challenging environment. Given this environment, playing our part to improve quality standards and prioritise patient safety becomes ever more important, and we will continue to promote good practice in the year ahead to protect the public.”

Key facts and figures from this year’s annual report include:

  • An average of 92% of the Standards of Good Regulation were met across all the regulators we oversee (falling to 88% when we published the 2023/24 report for the NMC in June 2025, which met 11 out of 18 Standards).
  • Seven out of the 10 regulators we oversee did not meet our standard on fitness to practise timeliness
  • We set up and chaired the Independent Oversight Group for the NMC following whistleblowing concerns and the publication of the Independent Culture Review
  • 2,230 fitness to practise cases received
  • 28 of the 29 fitness to practise appeals concluded during the year were upheld or settled
  • We continued to encourage collaboration and sharing of expertise, research and good practice through our in-person and online events (held across all four UK countries)
  • We launched a consultation to review our Standards of Good Regulation and Standards for Accredited Registers
  • We increased our expectations of what regulators should be doing to promote equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) – 2024/25 was the first year we monitored regulators against our enhanced requirements
  • 12% increase in the number of practitioners on Accredited Registers (reaching almost 130,000 practitioners across more than 60 roles in health and social care)
  • We published research on a common code of conduct
  • We continued to prepare for regulatory reform by drafting two guidance documents to support reformed regulators.

Looking forward, we are exploring how artificial intelligence (AI) and data can be used to enhance patient safety and answer the wider questions around who regulates it. We established a Regulatory Data and AI group and it met for the first time in March 2025. 

We will also continue to use our role to highlight regulatory gaps, especially around the continued significant risks from non-surgical cosmetics. 

Download the full report below.

ENDS

Professional Standards Authority for Health and Social Care

Contact: media@professionalstandards.org.uk

Notes to the editor
 

  1. 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.
  2. Our values are – integrity, transparency, respect, fairness and teamwork – and we strive to ensure that they are at the core of our work.
Find out more details about our work and the approach we take