Nursing Times wrote this article about our response to the £30million that NMC is spending on the FTP backlog.

We are not impressed as this has happened many times before and nothing has changed.

The NT article requires registration on their site. For those not registered, and as further detail, this is our full response.

NMCWatch has no faith that this latest investment will resolve the issues that contribute to the backlog.

We see time and time again extremely poor levels of investigation, biased investigations based on building a case against the registrant rather than getting to the bottom of the facts, lawyers for the NMC (many of them outsourced and expensive) deliberately not disclosing evidence as it may benefit the registrant’s case, and a continued lack of duty of candour on the part of the NMC to really own up to mistakes and ensure that processes are put in place to avoid repetition.

What will be different this time compared to previous years – throwing more money at it has not resolved the problem!

These issues go back decades – see these links and the screenshots below, of CHRE reviews, MP’s raising concerns, other £million investments, etc, etc.

2012 – https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-18676422

2022 – To deal with the backlog, the NMC is planning to hire 59 temporary staff at a cost of £1.1 million and outsource 50 cases.

July 2023 – £40million over 3 years pledged.

The latest £30 million is from registrant’s fees – registrants who often struggle to pay their annual fee. We have worked on many recent cases where thousands and thousands have been spent on cases that have lasted years to only conclude with no case to answer.

If the NMC is serious about regulation and improving patient care they need to move away from the legals driving the process and start looking at safe practice and the impact of over-regulation.

The only people who are winning at the moment are the lawyers. Patients are being let down as the current process is risking their safety, not assuring it.

The Council are signing off these budget spends without question and without asking for any scrutiny of why the issue keeps reoccurring, and never being resolved. Our annual registrants fees are being used to fund these reviews and investments but we have no say about this.

On their website the NMC state:

“Our charitable objective is to protect the health and wellbeing of the public. As a charity, we must ensure that our work demonstrates public benefit and complies with Charity Commission and OSCR requirements and guidance.”

How is this protecting the health and wellbeing of the public (which includes registrants)? And how is it of public benefit to waste funds again and again?

NMCWatch has nearly 600 members and we are angry that no one is scrutinising this issue properly.