Blog: New legislation will modernise how we regulate and help us better deliver for registrants and the public

The NMC is consulting on proposed changes to the Fitness to Practise (FtP) rules – which set out how we investigate, and act if necessary, when a concern is raised about a professional on the Register.

Everyone wants to see a Fitness to Practise process that is faster, fairer and more compassionate for the people involved. We have made steady progress to improve – increasing the rolling average of cases resolved within 15 months, from 60.8% in July 2023 to 71.8% in October 2025. But we will go further.

Our regulatory work is guided by legislation – the Nursing and Midwifery Order 2001. This is outdated legislation, which has had to be amended 28 times over the past quarter of a century – resulting in a complex and sometimes confusing framework for how we regulate.

This makes it difficult to transform Fitness to Practise for the better. Fortunately, the UK government has committed to working with us from 2026 to modernise our legislation. This is great news for the public we serve and the professionals we regulate.

But we don’t want to just sit and wait. What we can do in the meantime is make changes to the ‘rules’ – which set out how we operate and deliver our Fitness to Practise process.

Our Council can make these rules but they need to be approved by the Privy Council and laid in Parliament before they come into effect.

The changes we are proposing to the rules would make a positive difference to the process, because they would mean we can:

• Appoint legally qualified chairs to Practice Committee panels
• Strengthen our case management powers, so that we can give clear and specific instructions on how everyone involved in a case should prepare to enable the Practice Committee to reach a decision
• Share information via a digital platform or online account, where the nurse, midwife or nursing associate agrees
• Create flexibility in our process, for when we invite representations and the timescales for these, and how much notice we give of meetings and hearings
• Provide better support for vulnerable witnesses, enabling more people to give their evidence as effectively as possible.

These changes would help us to:

• reduce the age of our caseload
• remove unnecessary process delays
• free up capacity at the adjudication stage of our process
• improve the efficiency of hearings
• be more person-focused by recognising and putting people’s needs at the centre of what can be a distressing process.

For cases that are decided at a hearing, the changes we are making mean hearings will take less time, conclude more quickly and there will be more options for how information is shared to support everyone involved to participate.

For vulnerable witnesses, we would be able to provide more needs-led support.

As part of the overarching work to modernise our legislation, the government has also committed to protecting the title of ‘nurse’ in law, rather than ‘registered nurse’. We know how important this is to the profession and to the public – who need to know that anyone calling themselves a nurse has the mix of knowledge and skills they have a right to expect.

The General Medical Council (GMC) will be the first health and care professional regulator to get modernised legislation. This will set the template for how other regulators, including the NMC, are governed and how we carry out our regulatory work, including Fitness to Practise.

We are currently working with the Department of Health and Social Care, the GMC and other regulators to make sure that this framework delivers a more straightforward, timely and compassionate service for registrants and the public.

We hope that our new legislation will be in place by the end of this decade.

The consultation on our proposed Fitness to Practise rule changes is open to anybody who wants to have their say, whether they are a member of the public, a nurse, midwife or nursing associate on the Register, a student, or someone involved in the wider health and social care sector. It will close on 26 January 2026.

Other recent news…