Monitoring Report - General Chiropractic Council 2023/24

We have published our most recent report for the General Chiropractic Council (GCC).

Key statistics

• The GCC regulates chiropractors in the UK
• There were 3,831 professionals on its register (as at 30 June 2024)

Key findings

The GCC met our Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Standard. It performed well and demonstrated good practice in several ways. Its Education Standards have a clear focus on EDI and it has produced helpful guidance on EDI for education providers and registrants. The GCC launched a project to review decisions made by its Professional Conduct Committee to identify and address any possible equality issues, building on an earlier review of cases closed by its Investigating Committee. Although we noted some gaps in the GCC’s fitness to practise guidance documents regarding allegations of racism or other discriminatory behaviour, the GCC had identified this gap and has plans to address it. We will monitor the GCC’s work in this area.

The GCC is updating its standards for registrants, The Code: Standards of conduct, performance and ethic for chiropractors. It conducted a considerable amount of pre‑consultation work throughout the year to review existing evidence and gather stakeholders’ views. This work informed the proposals in its public consultation, which launched shortly after our review period. We will monitor the outcome of the consultation.

The GCC took longer to investigate fitness to practise investigations this year. The GCC reported plausible explanations for the increase in its timeliness; staffing issues had an impact due to the small size of the investigations team, plus the closure of some of its oldest cases. We recognised the challenges faced by the GCC as a small organisation but concluded investigations were taking too long this year. We decided Standard 15 was not met.

We identified opportunities for improvement within the GCC’s interim order process and decision-making guidance. We were particularly concerned that the guidance lacks focus on risk. The GCC was receptive to our feedback and has committed to reviewing its process and updating its documents. Given the risks involved with these types of cases, we expect the GCC to resolve the concerns we have identified promptly. We will monitor any changes the GCC makes.