The push for statutory oversight follows a major report from the Commission for the Future of Counselling and Psychotherapy, co-chaired by Phil Hope and Andrea Sutcliffe. The review stresses that formal oversight is urgently needed because practitioners frequently work in private, one-on-one sessions with vulnerable clients. Beyond establishing strict training standards, the commission revealed that regulating the profession could provide more than 370,000 additional therapy hours every week to tackle a national mental health waiting list of around 1.8 million people.
Key points
Existing voluntary accreditation schemes are insufficient because individuals accused of…: Existing voluntary accreditation schemes are insufficient because individuals accused of serious misconduct can continue seeing clients without oversight.
Many members of the public mistakenly believe that statutory regulations and mandatory tr…: Many members of the public mistakenly believe that statutory regulations and mandatory training standards are already protecting them.
Enacting statutory regulation would establish strict qualification standards and permanen…: Enacting statutory regulation would establish strict qualification standards and permanently prevent abusive therapists from operating.
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Ministers should introduce statutory regulation for counsellors and psychotherapists to protect the public from abuse, according to a report that has been hailed as a “watershed moment” for the profession.
Unlike most other healthcare roles, including doctors, midwives and osteopaths, “psychotherapist” and “counsellor” are not protected titles nor statutorily regulated professions in the UK.
This means that anyone can call themselves a therapist without a qualification, and can continue to practise even after an episode of misconduct, under a system that is poorly understood by the public.
For the first time, the professional bodies that represent counsellors and psychotherapists, and which run the current voluntary accreditation scheme, are calling for statutory regulation to boost confidence in the profession and protect the public from the growing number of cases of abuse and malpractice.
The report, the culmination of an independent review launched in October 2025 by the Commission for the Future of Counselling and Psychotherapy, argues that counsellors and psychotherapists are an untapped resource that could fill a mental health treatment gap estimated at about 1.8 million people on waiting lists.…
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