# The Health Professions Council (Practice Committees and Miscellaneous Amendments) Rules Order of Council 2009, Note: Explanatory note


(This note is not part of the Order)
This Order approves rules made by the Health Professions Council (“HPC”) in respect of the constitutions of its three Practice Committees – the Investigating Committee, the Conduct and Competence Committee and the Health Committee. These committees are case work committees that have functions with regard to fitness to practise proceedings. This Order also approves rules that make miscellaneous amendments to other HPC Rules.
Rules 1 and 2 contain introductory provisions. Rules 3 and 4 contain provisions relating to membership, chairing and quorum of the Practice Committees. Panels of members will be drawn from the list of the full membership of each committee in order to conduct proceedings with regard to particular cases. Each panel will be chaired by a panel chair, but in the panel chair’s absence, the members of the panel who are in attendance may select one of their number to chair a particular meeting.
Rules 6 to 8 contain provisions relating to disqualification from appointment as a member of a Practice Committee, and the grounds for suspending members or removing them from office. Rule 5 ensures that where there is a need to suspend or remove a committee member from office, or where a suspended or removed member has been involved in part of a case, that member’s participation in the proceedings does not invalidate the proceedings.
Rules 10 to 12 make consequential changes to the procedure rules for each of the Practice Committees, together with changes to take account of amendments to the Health Professions Order 2001 which relate to gender neutral drafting.
Rules 9 and 13 make consequential amendments to two other sets of rules of the HPC, which take account of the introduction of statutory regulation of practitioner psychologists and include further amendments relating to gender neutral drafting. The introduction of statutory regulation of practitioner psychologists requires amendments to the fees structure of the HPC, and amendments are made so that the practitioner psychologists who are entered in HPC’s register automatically when statutory regulation of practitioner psychologists starts do not have to pay a registration fee in respect of their first registration period, which expires (after four months) on 31st October 2009. They will then pay a reduced registration fee for their next registration period, from 1st November 2009 until 31st May 2011, as this period will be shorter than the standard two year registration period for HPC registrants.

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Source: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2009/1355/note (the official version)
Page: https://openlegislation.uk/health-professions-council-practice-committees-and-miscellaneous-amendments-rules-order-of-council-2009/note
Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Source: legislation.gov.uk, The National Archives.