What gets pharmacists struck off in 2026?

How many pharmacists are struck off each year?

Nineteen registrants were removed from the register by the Fitness to Practise Committee in 2024/25. That is up from 13 in 2023/24 and seven in 2022/23. The register held 65,776 pharmacists and 26,929 pharmacy technicians at 31 March 2025. So removal touches roughly one registrant in 5,000 a year.

The number of concerns is a different story. The GPhC received 5,477 concerns in 2023/24, up 31 per cent on 4,178 in 2022/23. The 2024/25 annual report records a further 13 per cent rise, without giving a total. Over 90 per cent are closed at initial assessment. The figures below come from the GPhC's annual fitness to practise reports for 2023/24 and 2024/25, and each column names the year it covers.

Two things stand out. Hearings almost doubled between 2022/23 and 2023/24, then held steady. And removals have risen faster than hearings, from seven of 36 hearings in 2022/23 to 19 of 69 in 2024/25. The Investigating Committee, which sits below the hearing stage, also closed 57 per cent more cases in 2024/25, up from 34 to 53, and issued 44 warnings against 26 the year before.

What conduct leads to removal?

The GPhC's hearings and outcomes guidance, revised in March 2024, tells committees when removal is the right answer. Removal "is reserved for the most serious conduct". The committee "should consider this outcome when the professional's behaviour is fundamentally incompatible with being a registered professional". It cannot remove a registrant whose impairment is solely a matter of health. That restriction is in article 54 of the Pharmacy Order 2010 as well as the guidance.

The guidance then singles out categories. The table summarises what it says about each, with the paragraph numbers.

Insight and remediation run through every decision. The guidance expects a professional to "accept and understand that they should have behaved differently" and to "take steps to prevent a reoccurrence". But paragraph 5.22 adds that some conduct "is so serious that it is not remediable", giving discrimination and sexual misconduct as examples. In practice, the determinations show that a registrant who denies proven facts, or does not engage at all, removes their own best argument against removal.

What do the 2025/26 removal cases show?

They show three routes to removal: serious criminal convictions, dishonesty involving medicines, and unsafe supply at scale with no insight. We read the published determinations for removals listed on the GPhC's hearings page between August 2025 and May 2026. The table gives the hearing date, the conduct and the committee's reasoning, without names.

Four of these nine removals followed criminal convictions, three of them for sexual offences or indecent images. Those cases are about character, and the committee's job is short. The other five are pharmacy cases, and they share two features. Controlled drugs appear in three of them. And in most of them the committee recorded a lack of insight: denial of proven facts, no engagement, or no evidence of remediation.

The April to May 2026 case is the most instructive for owners. Three pharmacists, a responsible pharmacist and two successive superintendents, faced allegations about the same online supply model. The conduct dated from 2017 to 2019. One was removed and two were suspended for 12 months. The determination records mitigation for the two who were suspended: one had left the service on realising the model's flaws, and one showed remorse and had since worked in compliant settings. That is the hearings guidance on insight and remediation working as written.

How does the GPhC deal with online prescribing concerns?

Most online concerns are closed quickly, and the serious ones go to enforcement or a hearing. The GPhC's Council papers for 11 December 2025 recorded 2,159 concerns in the second quarter of 2025/26, the highest quarter on record, against 1,373 in the same quarter of 2023/24. Online pharmacy concerns made up 17 per cent of all concerns. The same papers recorded 949 weight-management concerns since the fourth quarter of 2024/25. Of those, 882 were closed at initial assessment and 41 were referred to the investigation team, with 30 still open.

The 2024/25 annual report gives the enforcement side. The GPhC took "enforcement action against at least 12 pharmacies in relation to their supply of weight-management medicines". It also took action "against at least nine other pharmacies for inappropriately supplying medicines online". Those are premises powers, covered in our analysis of what the latest GPhC enforcement actions mean for online pharmacies. The registrant cases follow behind, because the median hearing timeline is just under three years.

When online cases do reach a hearing, the determinations turn on the same failures the February 2025 distance-selling guidance names. In the April to May 2026 case the committee found no consultation with patients, no health records, weak identity checks and payment incentives. In the March 2026 case the committee described medicines "liable to abuse without proper medical oversight". Where the line sits is set out in where lawful supply becomes illegal supply and in the remote prescribing rules for high-risk medicines.

Does a dispensing error get you struck off?

Not on its own. The GPhC closed 93 per cent of concerns at initial assessment in 2024/25, up from 91 per cent in 2023/24. Its own explanation is that over 90 per cent of concerns are closed early. Most are outside its powers, or the GPhC does "not consider that they are serious enough to call into question someone's fitness to practise". The December 2025 Council papers describe customer service issues and dispensing errors as the most common concern themes. They are the bulk of the 93 per cent.

What turns an error into a fitness to practise case is what happens next. The hearings guidance says "acting with openness and honesty when things go wrong is an essential duty". Committees should see "candid explanations, expressions of empathy and apologies as positive steps". And they "should take very seriously a finding that a pharmacy professional took deliberate steps to avoid being candid with a patient", considering outcomes at the upper end of the scale. Falsifying patient records sits in the dishonesty paragraphs, where removal may be the only proportionate outcome.

So the practical rule is unchanged. Record the error, tell the patient, report it and learn from it. Our guide to reporting a patient safety incident sets out the steps. A pharmacist who does that will rarely see the Investigating Committee. A pharmacist who alters the label record afterwards has created a dishonesty case.

How long does a fitness to practise case take?

Years, if it goes the distance. The 2024/25 annual report gives a median of between 12 and 14 months from receipt to closure for cases that go to investigation. For cases closed at the Fitness to Practise Committee, "our median timeline for closures at FtPC remains high at just under three years". The Professional Standards Authority found the GPhC met 17 of its 18 standards in 2024/25. The one it failed was Standard 15 on timeliness, which the GPhC says it has now missed for six reporting years.

The front end has improved. Over 76 per cent of concerns were assessed within six weeks in 2024/25, up from 54 per cent in 2023/24. The GPhC reported that cases open for more than 52 weeks fell from 422 in 2023/24 to 305 in 2024/25. The median time to an initial assessment decision fell from 5.7 weeks to 3.9 weeks. The back end has not. The enforcement paper to Council on 14 May 2026 is candid about it, and its figures are below.

For a registrant, the practical consequence is an interim order. Interim suspensions and conditions can run for up to 18 months while the case waits, and most of the removals above came with an immediate interim suspension pending appeal.

Can you come back after removal?

Not for five years, and not automatically. Article 57 of the Pharmacy Order 2010 bars an application for restoration "before the expiration of five years from the date of removal". It also bars a repeat application within 12 months of an earlier one. The Registrar must refer the application to the Fitness to Practise Committee, which decides on the evidence of current fitness to practise.

Restoration is also not the end of scrutiny. The January 2026 determination above concerned a pharmacist restored to the register and removed again within 12 months after further theft and use of controlled drugs. The committee said that conduct "would be regarded as incredibly serious by members of the public". Suspension is the alternative track: a maximum of 12 months at a time under article 54, subject to review hearings, and used in 22 cases in 2024/25.

What does this mean for you?

For owners and superintendents, the register-level data joins up with inspection data. Standards 1.1, 1.6 and 4.2 sit behind most failed inspections, as our study of why pharmacies fail GPhC inspections shows. The same records, controlled drug governance and safeguards decide whether a concern about an individual stops at initial assessment or reaches a hearing three years later.

Key takeaways

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