Regulating pre-hospital
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.
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.
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.
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
HPAC is included in the DBS' safeguarding landscape as represented in the image below.
Slide provided by DBS to HPAC for dissemination
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.
Register your staff
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.
£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: press@hpac-uk.org | Public enquiries: click here | Make a donation here
Email: info@hpac-uk.org | communications@hpac-uk.org | 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 rigorous and includes thorough checks of documentation and backgrounds — including manaully cross-referencing over 25 registers, barred lists, and tribunal records for every applicant— no regulator can guarantee 100% verification of all the data provided by applicants. To suggest otherwise would be misleading to the public and stakeholders. On rare occasions, a dishonest applicant may somehow manage to progress through our due diligence processes. When discovered, they are immediately marked as "removed from the register", their employers are notified and they referred to the police and DBS. Further more employers can also request a direct link to a registrant via the organisation portal; if the request is accepted by the registrant, the employer can view the same documentation we have reviewed.
**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 or it may lapse, which creates a temporary gap in live data while we process a new DBS and re-register them on the Update Service. We generally operate at 96% compliance, and continue to introduce processes to improve that metric.
Email: info@hpac-uk.org | communications@hpac-uk.org | 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 rigorous and includes thorough checks of documentation and backgrounds — including manaully cross-referencing over 25 registers, barred lists, and tribunal records for every applicant— no regulator can guarantee 100% verification of all the data provided by applicants. To suggest otherwise would be misleading to the public and stakeholders. On rare occasions, a dishonest applicant may somehow manage to progress through our due diligence processes. When discovered, they are immediately marked as "removed from the register", their employers are notified and they referred to the police and DBS. Further more employers can also request a direct link to a registrant via the organisation portal; if the request is accepted by the registrant, the employer can view the same documentation we have reviewed.
**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 or it may lapse, which creates a temporary gap in live data while we process a new DBS and re-register them on the Update Service. We generally operate at 96% compliance, and continue to introduce processes to improve that metric.
***Some registrants may forget to re-enrol on the DBS Update Service or it may lapse, which creates a temporary gap in live data while we process a new DBS and re-register them on the Update Service. We generally operate at 96% compliance, and continue to introduce processes to improve that metric.