BPS launches review of its member conduct rules
We have begun a review of our member conduct rules and processes for managing complaints.
25 June 2021
The BPS Member Board has instructed a Task and Finish Group of members from across the Member Board, Practice Board and Ethics Committee to consider our existing policy and procedures, to identify areas for improvement and to draft new rules for consultation.
This work builds on the lessons learned in creating a new complaints process specifically for the recently launched Wider Psychological Workforce Register.
The group has already had an initial conversation with the Ethics Committee and considered the challenge of finding an approach that is appropriate for psychologists who work directly with service users, as well as those who work in corporate environments or in academia.
The HCPC is the statutory regulator for practitioner psychologists and is the body authorised to address issues of fitness to practise. We will not replicate its work, but will locate ourselves as complementary to the HCPC as a professional body with a broad membership.
The Task and Finish Group is keen that all members have a chance to contribute to, and thereby feel some ownership of, the new member conduct rules.
In early September the group will use feedback already received to create a second draft, and we will contact members then to ask for your time to look at the drafts and to give us your views.
It is important that members feel ownership of the shared rules by which we all abide, and agree that they are appropriate for our profession. We will be inviting members to contribute to a consultation on the proposed new rules during September.
Your suggestions will inform revisions to the draft and a final version will be submitted to the Board of Trustees for their approval at the beginning of November.
We hope that you will be able to take part in setting out our expectations so that they are fitting for us as a professional body and learned society (but not a regulator of practice), and that they are appropriate for our diverse membership in their varied range of work contexts.