CQC, Disclosure & Barring Service, National Police Chief's Council, NHS Safeguarding, and the Independent Ambulance Association recognise the Health Practice Associates register in supporting the safe recruitment of non-paramedic ambulance clinicians.

The Health Practice Associates Council (HPAC) is the United Kingdom’s regulatory body for pre-hospital urgent and emergency clinical responders in non-statutory grades. We were established in 2014, when we conducted a UK-wide consultation with NHS Ambulance Services, Voluntary Ambulance Services (St John & British Red Cross), and Independent Ambulance Sector providers, including the Independent Ambulance Association. We registered as a Community Interest Company (CIC) in 2017 and are owned by the public. We established a Council of volunteers with a wealth of industry expertise and experience, many of whom have played key roles in advancing and shaping the UK pre-hospital emergency healthcare sector.

As a non-profit body, we work with key stakeholders across the UK and seek the registration of clinicians who meet our standards in skills, training, conduct, and health to uphold public safety. Every applicant's background and qualifications are manually *verified by our Registration Team. Once approved, our system performs a rolling 24-hour revalidation of each registrant's criminal record status via an API to the Disclosure & Barring Service, instantly alerting our compliance team and associated employers if a registrant's DBS certificate status changes at any point in the future. Our system audits all Primary Qualifications and Statutory & Mandatory certificates daily for expirations and upcoming expirations/re-certification requirements. We also conduct manual audits of around **5% of the register annually. For patient and public safety, we also have API access to the DVLA driver's database that automatically revalidates drivers' licences every three months. Our blue light driver register automatically removes registrants it detects with suspended drivers' licences or more than six points, and immediately alerts associated employers of the change. PTS drivers are being phased onto this system during 2025.

Accordion Example

Application Requirements

Our registration team check and verify each applicant's qualifications, identity, and background before approval. This comprehensive process includes conducting a full five-point enhanced DBS check, which is subsequently registered with the update service and revalidated every 24 hours by our system. Additionally, we collect evidence of statutory and mandatory training, as well as Continuing Professional Development (CPD). Our team and system monitor and support registrants' compliance to ensure adherence to all required standards.

View HPAC Grades Framework

Nationwide Police Engagement

The HPAC is signposted nationwide in all police custody suites in the country as the non-paramedic referral pathway. This arrangement is based on the principles of common law disclosure and helps to rapidly identify and alert service providers of new risks to patients, staff, the public and employers. The council regularly shares intelligence with police forces in bilateral information exchanges when dealing with referrals and fitness to practice investigations. This helps both law enforcement and HPAC to better serve and protect citizens, staff, and employers through regulatory compliance.

Engagement with the Disclosure & Barring Service (DBS)

We revalidate all DBS certificates on a daily basis, ensuring we hold the most up to date Enhanced DBS information on all our registrants. Registrants can readily prove that their DBS has been revalidated by scanning their ID cards. HPAC also shares details of relevant referrals that we receive with the DBS. Details of our investigations, including registrant compliance with the fitness to practice process and outcomes, provide valuable insight for the Barring Service when assessing individuals.

HPAC is included in the DBS' safeguarding landscape as represented in the image below.

Slide provided by DBS to HPAC for dissemination

Why is HPAC needed?

There are up to 30,000 face-to-face pre-hospital patient contacts per day in the UK made by ambulance staff wearing the trusted green uniform. Did you know that in the UK only 50% of frontline ambulance staff are regulated by statute? Whilst the vast majority of clinicians are safe, patient-centred, extremely caring individuals, sadly, as in all areas, some pose a genuine risk to patient and staff safety. We believe that with the support of like-minded stakeholders, using a non-statutory approach, we can bridge this gap in regulation.

All patients and staff deserve to be safe.

Support regulation compliance, reduce risk being passed on or inherited.

HERE

There is no good reason for the UK not to pursue the same safeguarding standards as Ireland and the USA. It's time to catch up and regulate 100% of patient-facing ambulance staff.

Who is registered and how much does it cost?

£79.50 per year

There is a registration fee of £79.50 per year, which is applied automatically every twelve months on the renewal date, OR £12.99 per month, which can be cancelled at any time. A high-quality driver's licence-style ID card with multiple security features, including NFC instant DBS status check (revalidated every 24 hours). If an applicant is not on the update service, a fresh DBS check will be run at no additional cost (subsequent DBS checks or replacement ID cards may carry an extra charge).

Regulated Grades

Grade
First Aiders (FA)
Emergency First Responders (EFR)
Ambulance Care Assistants (ACA)
Emergency Care Assistants (ECA)
Emergency Medical Technicians (EMT) - HPAC registered EMTs are IHCD BTEC L3 equivalent, FREUC 5 or higher
Associate Ambulance Practitioners (AAP)

Before applying to register, please click here to ensure you understand how we map our grades and what training/qualifications are required for each.

Employers can support the register by enrolling here | Clinicians can apply for registration here | Media enquiries: [email protected] | Public enquiries: click here | Make a donation here

Email: [email protected] | [email protected] | Tel: 0208 0048226 (Tues - Fri, 10am - 4pm)
The Health Practice Associates Council is a Community Interest Company (CIC) registered in England and Wales, company number 10830551, and is regulated by the Information Commissioner's Office and the Office of the Regulator of Community Interest Companies.
While our application process is extremely stringent and we check all documentation and backgrounds thoroughly, this includes checking over 25 UK registers, barred lists and tribunal records. As with any regulator, it is not possible to guarantee 100% verification of qualifications we are supplied by applicants, and to do so would be misleading to the public and stakeholders. Sadly, although extremely rarely, a dishonest applicant may on occasion find a way through our robust due diligence process. When discovered, we remove that individual from the register and refer them to the police. We also allow all employers the option to link direcly to a staff member who is registered with us; provided the link request is accepted by the registrant, the employer can also directly examine all the documentation we have examined.

As HPAC has thousands of registrants and applications a 5% ramdomised manual audit is inline with current HCPC and other statutory regulator standards.

Some registrants may forget to re-enrol on the DBS Update Service, which creates a temporary gap in live data while we process a new DBS and re-register them on the Update Service.

*Names are checked against all 15 occupations registered on HCPC.

Check the Register...

Regulated Grades