22 June 2022
We announced in May that we would share with you this month our plans for revising the NRCPD Complaints Procedure. The current procedure was introduced in November 2015 and we are coming to the end of a thorough review of it. Bringing the procedure up to date with best practice is a crucial step in our plans for statutory regulation of language service professionals.
We are currently finalising the draft revised procedure ready for a five-week public consultation to be launched in early July. The procedure is retitled as the 'NRCPD Fitness to Practice Procedure'. The Code of Conduct has also been amended to incorporate two changes: it has not undergone a full review (which is expected to start in 2023) but is also part of the consultation.
The new procedure is of interest to a great many people, and we want to ensure everyone has the opportunity to provide feedback: professional associations, d/Deaf and deafblind people, professionals on our registers, Deaf-led organisations, the general public, and anyone with an interest in how we regulate. Along with the revised procedure and Code of Conduct (which will be published in both BSL and English), we will publish a summary of the most important changes, and instructions for sending us your comments. Professional associations, national Deaf-led charities and professionals on our registers will receive specific invitations for this, but that is not to exclude any other organisation or person that wishes to send in feedback.
We will run weekly consultation events via Zoom during the consultation period. All consultation events will have BSL interpretation and captioning. If there is demand for more than the five events that we have scheduled, we can arrange further consultation events. You can also provide feedback by email or in BSL via VRS. Full instructions will come as part of launching the consultation.
Once the consultation period ends, we will assess all the feedback and make further revisions as necessary. We will publish all feedback that we receive alongside our response to each issue. It is too early to say now exactly when the final versions will be published and come into force, but our intention is for the procedure to be fully in place this Autumn.
If you have any questions about the above, please get in touch with us via VRS in BSL or via email at: enquiries@nrcpd.org.uk
With many thanks,
NRCPD.
