NMC already improving following PSA Performance Review for 2023–2024

The PSA’s annual review of the NMC’s performance for the period 1 July 2023 to 31 December 2024 confirmed that we only met 11 of the PSA’s 18 standards of good regulation, reflecting the high-profile challenges we faced during that period.

Since the start of this year, we have embarked on a radical turnaround programme. We are progressing at pace with improvements – ensuring that we focus on our core purpose of protecting the public, promoting confidence in the professions, and maintaining standards.

What we’re doing to improve

We are under new leadership, with Paul Rees MBE starting as Interim Chief Executive and Registrar (CER) on the 20 January, and Ron Barclay-Smith starting as our new Chair of Council in early April. We also have underway an open competition to recruit a permanent CER, and hope to conclude that process by the end of June 2025.

We have also appointed Ravi Chand CBE as Executive Director of People and Culture from 7 July. Ravi has extensive experience leading culture change and embedding EDI. Ravi is currently Director for the Civil Service (People and Places Directorate) in the Cabinet Office and has previously worked as Chief People Officer at the Foreign Office and Human Resources Director at HM Revenue and Customs.

Emma Westcott has also been appointed as our substantive Executive Director of Strategy and Insight.

Over the past six months, we have published a three-year Culture Transformation Plan to build a positive, empowering and inclusive culture for NMC colleagues and everyone involved in our regulatory processes.

We are also starting to see progress as a result of our Fitness to Practise (FtP) Plan – ensuring that we can continue making decisions that keep people safe, in the most timely and considerate way possible.

To begin to transform our culture, we have:

• Signed up to the UNISON Anti-Racism Charter.
• Taken significant steps to reduce our ethnicity pay gap, such as pledging to ensure ethnically diverse shortlists where there are Black, Asian and ethnic minority candidates who meet the minimum requirement.
• Designed a flagship mentoring programme for our staff to ensure that 80 percent of participants are Black, Asian or other ethnic minority.
• Started to deliver coaching to all managers on strong and effective leadership, embedding equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI), and values-based decision making.
• Consulted with staff on a new set of values.

Our FtP Plan is delivering consistent improvements. We have:

• Increased the proportion of cases resolved within our 15-month-target – the rolling monthly average is now 69.8 percent compared to 60.8 percent in July 2023, the beginning of the PSA reporting period. This demonstrates real progress towards our target of 80 percent.
• Made record numbers of decisions at screening – the initial assessment stage of the FtP process – with 809 decisions made in May 2025 alone.
• Introduced updated screening guidance to help us focus on the right cases and make prompt decisions about matters which are not for us. 
• Established a safeguarding hub and new referral process for raising safeguarding concerns.

We are also driving change in other areas of our regulatory remit, including strengthening our approach to education quality assurance. We have also published a plan to:

• Update the Code and revalidation process by Autumn 2027;
• Review practice learning by Autumn 2026; and,
• Produce standards for advanced practice by March 2028.

Crucially, we will shortly publish ambitious new targets to eliminate bias from our processes – as part of a broader set of EDI strategic objectives to ensure we achieve equity for nursing and midwifery professionals and for our colleagues.

The standards we have met

PSA Standards of Good Regulation that we have met include maintaining up-to-date standards for registrants, which are kept under review and prioritise service user safety; and ensuring that our fitness to practise decisions are proportionate, consistent and fair.

Paul Rees MBE, NMC Interim Chief Executive and Registrar, said:

“The PSA’s latest report reflects a dark period in the NMC’s history, and we expected to fall short on meeting some of the Standards of Good Regulation.

“I recognise that our performance in 2023-2024 was not good enough and since joining the NMC in January, I’ve committed to turning the organisation around – ensuring that we build a positive, empowering and inclusive culture for our people, and improve the regulatory experience for the public and nursing and midwifery professionals.

“Radical change is underway and we have made significant strides through the delivery of our Culture Transformation and Fitness to Practise plans. In the coming days we will publish ambitious EDI targets, to ensure we achieve equity for our colleagues and everyone involved in our processes.”

Ron-Barclay-Smith, NMC Chair of Council, said:

“It is clear that 2023–2024 was a particularly difficult year for the NMC, with significant, high-profile issues during that period, which the organisation has since started to address at pace.

“Whilst the report reflects the past, we are not complacent. We continue to learn and improve so as to be the best we can be.

“As Chair of Council, I am determined to guide, challenge and support the NMC Executive so that the organisation is fit for purpose, and can promote the safe and effective nursing and midwifery care everyone has the right to expect.”

Read the full report on the PSA's website.

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