Not My College ?

At the first Council meeting of 2025 it was revealed the College thought six months was  'an appropriate timeframe,'  to complete the initial phase of a disciplinary investigation ... six months ! For anyone who has been on the receiving end it feels more like six years.  I'm not sure if things have changed, but it used to be a letter would arrive out of the blue saying a complaint had been made and the College would be in touch in due course. No mention of who made the complaint, no mention of what it related to, nothing. Then, eventually, a more detailed 'charge' would arrive to which the defendant was required to respond. After that, months of to and fro correspondence, of endless picking and probing. The more it became obvious the original claim was vexatious, the more they dug. The impression was the PIC would not be content unless they drew blood, until they found something, anything, no matter how small or unrelated, to pin on you. Most practitioners who ha...

  From this week's Vet times; 'The college has invited clinicians who have concerns about their independence being undermined to use a confidential helpline to report their concerns following allegations in a Radio 4 investigation.' Can this be the same College that commissioned a former senior police officer to interrogate the RCVS Council in a bid to identify the person who leaked their serious  concerns  about changes to the disciplinary process.   Really ?  The investigation is believed to have cost tens of thousands of pounds but the RCVS has refused to say how much (it's not your money it's ours, shut up!). After all that they didn't find the leak, but the point had been made; as the saying goes, 'the process is the punishment.' So here's a question for the RCVS. Where should Council members go, to whom should they report their  concerns, as our out of touch, elitist College moves further and further away from the practising profession?  Thi...

R emote  C ontrolling &  V ery  S ecretive.   The Freedom of Information Act  is based on the idea that more openness leads to more trust between society and public bodies, or in our case, the membership and the  RCVS . So if you submit a question to the RCVS , don't be surprised if you get an email back saying your request is being dealt with under the Freedom of Information Act . Goodness, you think, they must be taking it seriously, this is good news - yes? Well actually no. The College have discovered a clever little wheeze. By sticking strictly to the very narrow letter of the law their clever lawyers are able to avoid giving straight answers. Isn't it a bit ironic, that an Act of Parliament intended to make organisations more accountable, has been cunningly applied by our wonderfully open, compassionate, diverse, inclusive (insert your own superlative here) College, to actually limit accountability. They hate sharing information wi...