Our work with regulators

Our work with the health and social care regulators

We oversee the 10 health and social care regulators. These regulators ‘register’ health and care professionals working in occupations that Parliament has said must be regulated. For example, doctor, nurse, pharmacist and paramedic are all regulated occupations.

A register is more than a list. It shows that the professionals on it are properly trained and qualified and meet the regulator's standards for conduct and competence. It is a criminal offence for anyone not on these registers to work in these regulated occupations.

Regulators do four things:

• Set standards of competence and conduct that health and care professionals must meet in order to be registered and practise
• Check the quality of education and training courses to make sure they give students the skills and knowledge to practise safely and competently
• Maintain a register that everyone can search
• Investigate complaints about professionals on their register and decide if they should be allowed to continue to practise or should be struck off the register - either because of problems with their conduct or their competence.

You can find out more about their work by visiting our Find a regulator page. Most of the regulators we oversee work across the United Kingdom except for Social Work England and the two pharmacy professional regulators:  the General Pharmaceutical Council (Great Britain) and the Pharmaceutical Society of Northern Ireland.

Still not sure? Find out more in our blog explaining more about professional regulation in the UK.