Monitoring Report - General Medical Council 2024/25

We have published our most recent report for the General Medical Council.

Key statistics

• The GMC regulates doctors, physician associates and anaesthesia associates
• There were 409,768 professionals on its register (as at 30 September 2025)
• The report covers the period 1 October 2024 to 30 September 2025

Key findings and areas for improvement

Anaesthesia Associates and Physician Associates

In this review period the GMC started regulating Anaesthesia Associates (AAs) and Physician Associates (PAs). It consulted on the rules, standards and guidance for these professions and updated its own guidance to reflect that it now regulates them. It has also designed and introduced the assessments AAs and PAs must pass to register with the GMC, and quality assurance processes for AA and PA course providers.

Doctors subject to overseas regulatory action

In October 2025 it came to light that some doctors who had restrictions on their practice overseas were allowed to practise without restriction in the UK. Some doctors were already dual registered at the time the sanction was imposed overseas and there were two doctors who registered with the GMC after being sanctioned overseas. The GMC took steps to restrict the practice of the doctors involved and is considering how it can continue to strengthen its registration processes. This is an area of risk that we will continue to monitor closely with the GMC through our routine engagement and performance review assessments.

Equality, Diversity and Inclusion

The GMC continues to perform well against our Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Standard and we have identified additional areas of good practice this year. The GMC continues to report on the progress of its EDI work, as well as the make-up of its register. We have also seen examples of the GMC working with other organisations to produce guidance for registrants on EDI issues. We asked the GMC to provide us with more information about its methods for collecting EDI data from people raising fitness to practise concerns because we had limited information about this last year. The GMC is planning to improve the quality of the data it collects through a diversity data review.

Fitness to Practise

The GMC has met all five fitness to practise standards again this year. Its timeliness data has improved slightly since last year although we note the increase in open older cases; we will monitor this closely. In this review period the GMC reviewed changes it made in 2022/23 relating to third-party investigations and identified some improvements it can make, which we will consider in our next review. In September 2025 the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service (MPTS) published new guidance to support tribunals in making decisions which considered assessment of risk and guidance on specific case types such as sexual misconduct.