Recent cases

The regulators send us all of the decisions made by their final fitness to practise panels. We read the decisions and if we have a concern, we ask for copies of all the evidence. If we continue to be concerned we can hold a case meeting with our lawyers to decide whether to refer the case to Court.

We only refer decisions to Court if there is no other effective means of protecting the public. The value of our review of final decisions is that it helps to improve the overall quality of the regulators’ processes and the decisions made by their panels and committees. Our power to refer decisions to Court comes from Section 29 of the National Health Service Reform and Health Care Professions Act 2002.

We promote good practice across the regulators in a number of ways, including sharing with them the 'learning points' that we identify from all the decisions that we review. You can read below cases we have considered recently at Section 29 case meetings but have not referred to Court.