The PDA has responded to this consultation titled “Consultation on our approach to Performance Review.”
The consultation sought views on the scope of the review process:
- Should all of the Standards of Good Regulation be assessed annually for all the regulators?
- Assessing risk: how can we best identify risks to public protection and public confidence through the performance review process?
- Decision-making: should we retain the current binary system – where regulators meet or do not meet a Standard – or adopt a different approach?
- Supporting improvement: how can we ensure that our performance reviews add the greatest value and enhance the work of the regulators in protecting the public?
- Thematic reviews: do you think thematic reviews would assist us in our scrutiny of the regulators and enhance our public protection role?
The PSA currently publishes a comprehensive annual performance review for each of the 10 regulators. The process is detailed even though some regulators find it inefficient. The reviews and narrative contain details that would otherwise not be available to the public or registrants.
The narrative is especially relevant and gives context to the review and how the PSA has measured the performance of each regulator against 18 standards. These 18 standards, which the PSA assesses as being met or not met, are informed by the authority’s principles of good regulation which states that regulators should act in a way which is:
- Proportionate
- Consistent
- Targeted
- Transparent
- Accountable
- Agile.
The PSA proposed that instead of an annual performance review each regulator would still have a comprehensive performance review but only twice in each decade. The PSA proposed receiving enhanced datasets from the regulators and when needed it would perform a targeted review.
The PDA has found the comprehensive PSA annual performance reviews useful. The last 2 performance reviews of the GPhC found that there were significant concerns about how the GPhC manages fitness to practice concerns. It was only through these published performance reviews that these problems were identified.
Download the PDA’s full response here
Download the consultation document here
The consultation closed on 04/03/2021.