Zeno's Blog

The random thoughts of a sceptical activist.

Now, what was that Section 60 Order all about again?

Saturday 15 August 2009 Edit

Remember the General Chiropractic Council’s Section 60 Order application to the Privy Council?

The reply I got from the GCC, when I asked what it was all about, wasn’t exactly forthcoming about the nature of the changes, despite it being somewhat wordy.

But we know now.

The GCC have recently published the agenda for their Council meeting next Tuesday, 18 August 2009. There are many interesting items up for discussion, but the first item of Chief Executive’s Report states:

1 Amendments to the Registration Rules

1.1 The General Chiropractic Council (Registration) (Amendment) Rules Order of Council 2009 will come into force on 1 September. A copy is attached as Appendix A to this paper. The affects [sic] are as follows

  • removal of the various forms of application
  • removal of the exemption from payment of the annual retention fee for registrants who are subject to investigation, proceedings or suspension
  • removal of the £75 fee for change of registered address

The second effect is the interesting one. Before this order, chiropractors who were the subject of disciplinary procedures didn’t have to pay the GCC their annual registration fee of £1,000.

What this new order means is that, from 01 September 2009, all 600-odd chiropractors (see their Regulatory Report) who are currently the subject of a complaint will still have to pay their £1,000. Phew! That means the GCC not have to suffer a drop of £600,000 in income.

Why was there no mention of this in their Chief Executive’s explanation of the Section 60 Order?

At least it means that they’ll have the cash to pay the new staff they apparently need to cope with all the complaints.

Categories

AltMed
Comments (7)

7 thoughts on “Now, what was that Section 60 Order all about again?”

  1. Hi Zeno, if you want some free entertainment’, the GCC Council meeting is open to the public. Anyone can go along and witness procedings and get a full set of the papers before council.

    Wicklow St is near Kings Cross Station.

    Reply
  2. Pingback: Twitted by jackofkent

  5. What this means is the GCC can drag out the process for a long time without having to give up £600,000 of their income.
    The GCC are banking on the fact you will loose interest and not spend the time making 600 individual complaints and they will drag it out.
    Right now the GCC does not have enough chiropractors to sit on the Investigating Committee to determine if there is a case to answer for one of your complaints never mind 600.
    If you hang in there, thats when it will get interesting.

    Reply

  6. I have all the time in the world…

    The GCC have recently appointed two more chiropractors to their Investigation Committee: Aaron Coode and Amanda Jones-Harris. Both are at the Anglo European College of Chiropractic and both are members of the BCA. I wonder if they’ll be investigating complaints against other BCA members?

    They have also appointed one ‘lay’ member, Helen Kitchen. She doesn’t appear to be a chiropractor, but she does (or used to) work for Penningtons, one of the GCC’s legal advisers.

    I have more to say on this, but I’ll blog on it later.

    Reply

  7. I saw that, those names were not on the GCC website yesterday. The chiropractors are tutors at the AECC and so would not be on your list. Being BCA would not preclude them from sitting on the IC as long as they did not know the chiropractors concerned.

    The BCA would have opposed the change on fees if they were not given assurances on the IC appointments. They would never have agreed to more McTimoney or UCA appointments.This is how the GCC operates, probably all regulators.

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *


The reCAPTCHA verification period has expired. Please reload the page.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.