Graeme J Crew
Introduction
Graeme J Crew is a former Band 7 healthcare practitioner who was struck off the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC) register in December 2023 after a reviewing panel found his fitness to practise remained impaired by findings of dishonesty. An October 2022 panel had found he kept £2,196.40 in duplicate overtime payments without telling his employer, practised for nearly a year while unregistered, did not tell his employer his registration had lapsed, and gave a false date on his readmission application. After a year of complete silence through his suspension review, the panel concluded a further suspension would serve no useful function. The case appears on MedicWatch’s independent record of regulator determinations, on the official HCPTS hearings site, and on MedicWatch’s suspensions list.
Background Information
Crew worked for East Kent Hospitals University Foundation Trust as a Band 7 practitioner in the Channel Day Surgery, supervising more than 70 members of staff. In May and June 2018, when weekend surgery lists were being run to cut waiting-list backlogs, he received overpayments of £2,196.40 through double payments for seven overtime shifts claimed through both the trust’s roster system and the NHS Professionals agency system. He did not inform the trust. When the trust investigated and placed restrictions on his duties in January 2020, and suspended him, neither step was reported to the HCPC. The trust’s referral of April 2020 also surfaced older conduct: Crew had practised as a healthcare practitioner from 10 November 2009 to 30 October 2010 while off the HCPC register, without telling his employer, and had told the HCPC on his readmission form that he last practised in September 2009 — which was not the case.
The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation
Dishonesty found on the registration-lapse particulars, kept overtime payments found proved. Particular 2 — non-disclosure of the January 2020 restrictions — was not proved.
The 2022 panel, hearing the case in Crew’s absence, found proved the particular covering the seven unreported overpayments, non-disclosure of his 2010 suspension by the trust, the unregistered practice from November 2009 to October 2010, the failure to tell his employer about the lapsed registration, and the false last-practice date on the readmission form. It found dishonesty in the unregistered-practice, non-disclosure and readmission-form particulars — but not in the overtime particular — and found those dishonest particulars amounted to misconduct. It imposed a twelve-month suspension order with an interim suspension covering a potential appeal period, while finding the risk of repetition low.
At the mandatory review on 10 November 2023 there was no contact from Crew at all — no adjournment application, no submissions, no evidence of reflection or remediation. The panel found impairment remained on both personal and public components and concluded that further suspension would serve no useful function, directing a striking-off order effective from 6 December 2023.
Public Reaction and Consequences
The case’s arithmetic is blunt: a supervisor of 70 staff who kept double-paid overtime in 2018, and whose earlier unregistered year went undisclosed until a routine registration check caught it, ended on the permanent removal list after ignoring the regulator that had suspended rather than erased him. The 2022 panel’s low repetition-risk finding was expressly premised on the assumption a registrant would engage with a remediation route; the review panel found the opposite — no engagement, reflection, remediation, current training or information about his current circumstances — and converted the suspension into erasure. Crew is listed among suspended practitioners on MedicWatch’s public suspensions list.
Current Status
Crew was struck off with effect from 6 December 2023. The striking-off decision and the underlying dishonesty findings are published on the HCPTS hearings site and recorded on MedicWatch. He cannot work as an HCPC-registered practitioner, and any readmission application would confront the recorded finding that his misconduct centred on dishonesty and breaches of fundamental professional tenets, compounded by his failure to participate in either the substantive hearing or the review.
Impact on Their Career/Life
Crew lost his registration and his career pathway in the profession, with the dishonesty findings — working unregistered for a year while telling the regulator he had not practised, and retaining duplicate overtime — permanently on the public record. The progression from a twelve-month suspension with a low repetition-risk finding to erasure within a year was driven entirely by his own non-engagement, the same pattern the original panel had already noted. His case remains searchable on the official hearings site and on independent records such as MedicWatch.