Performance Review - General Pharmaceutical Council 2024/25

We have published our latest report for the General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC). It covers how the GPhC met our Standards of Good Regulation during 2024/25 and is one of our shorter, monitoring reports.

Key statistics

• The GPhC maintains a register of pharmacists, pharmacy technicians and pharmacies in Great Britain
• There were 92,989 pharmacy professionals and 13,220 pharmacy premises on the register (as at 30 June 2025)

Key findings and areas for improvement

Fitness to Practise

The GPhC has met four out of five fitness to practise (FTP) standards this year. The GPhC recognises that there is still more work to do, and we will continue to monitor the GPhC’s ongoing programme of improvement.  

The GPhC did not meet Standard 15 again this year because it is still taking too long to process fitness to practise (FTP) cases, despite the efforts the GPhC has made this last year to reduce its caseload including legacy cases. We have escalated our concerns to the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care and Health and Social Care Committee Chair. 

Standard 3 on Equality, Diversity and Inclusion

The GPhC met our Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Standard again this year. It continues to be active in relation to EDI and it continues to perform strongly against the majority of the indicators for this Standard. We saw examples of good practice, in the creation of a Council Anti-Racism Champions Working Group; the implementation of its Diversity Action Plan for the Council member recruitment; and the work carried out to collect/analyse EDI data from fitness to practise (FtP) complainants and make improvements to its processes. However, we have identified an area for improvement and note that there are some gaps in the GPhC’s FtP guidance documents in that they do not make reference to allegations of racist and other discriminatory behaviour when assessing and investigating concerns. We will monitor what steps the GPhC takes to address this.

Standards for Chief Pharmacists

In January 2025 the GPhC launched its Standards for Chief Pharmacists. The Standards set out professional responsibilities and describe the knowledge, conduct and performance required by a Chief Pharmacist to support their organisation and its staff to deliver safe and effective pharmacy services. The standards were developed following new legislation which removes the threat of criminal sanctions for inadvertent preparation and dispensing errors by pharmacy staff working in hospitals and similar settings.

Strategic Plan 2025-2030

In June 2025 the GPhC launched its new Strategic Plan for the next five years and outlined three strategic aims. We will continue to monitor how the GPhC works towards progressing its Strategic Plan over the coming performance reviews.