Incorrect recommendations, changing submission dates and the reliability of recommendations

It is important that the recommendations you make are accurate and reliable.

However, it is possible that your recommendation may be incorrect due to:

• administrative errors
• new information coming to light after the recommendation was made.

The GMC does not have the power to correct or withdraw a decision following receiving an incorrect recommendation. However, we can bring forward the doctor’s next submission date to allow you to make a new recommendation.

If an incorrect submission is made you must:

• contact our revalidation team as soon as possible to discuss next steps
• inform the doctor of the error
• review your systems and processes to mitigate the risk of this happening again.

You can ask the GMC to change a doctor’s submission date, but this must be agreed by us before the doctor’s submission date.

• If a doctor under notice needs more time to meet the revalidation requirements, and there are reasonable circumstances to account for this, you can make a recommendation to defer their submission date
• In exceptional cases we may change a doctor’s submission date to a later date when they are not under notice
• If a doctor is failing to engage with revalidation you can ask us to bring forward their submission date at any time, to allow you to make a recommendation of non-engagement

We will consider requests to move submission dates on a case-by-case basis.

If we are concerned about the reliability of your recommendations, we will use our guidance on managing and responding to information about revalidation to decide how to respond.