Hamed Salehi
Introduction
Dr. Hamed Salehi is a doctor based in Havering, East London, who was the director of Common Stations Limited, a Romford-based academy that ran preparation courses for the Professional and Linguistic Assessments Board (PLAB) 2 test — the exam international medical graduates must pass to obtain full registration with the General Medical Council. In September 2026, a Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service (MPTS) tribunal found that Salehi had elicited confidential information about the content of the PLAB 2 exam from candidates, used it to create teaching materials that handed his students an unfair advantage, and had made social media posts and leaflets advertising a claimed 100 per cent pass rate for the company. He was struck off the medical register as of September 30, 2026.
Background Information
Common Stations PLAB Academy in Romford offered courses for the PLAB 2 assessment, which evaluates the clinical and professional skills of international medical graduates wanting to practise medicine in the UK. The GMC does not operate its own training programme for PLAB candidates and does not take issue with responsible course providers preparing candidates for the test, provided the material they use does not compromise the integrity of the exam. The case against the academy began on February 15, 2019, when a GMC member of staff found a folder left behind at the Clinical Assessment Centre on a PLAB 2 exam day: it contained a large volume of information about the PLAB exam, and the wording within its pages claimed copyright on behalf of Common Stations. The information was assessed as capable of compromising the integrity of the exam for any candidate who had seen it beforehand, and the matter was escalated for investigation.
The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation
Struck off by the medical tribunal. An MPTS tribunal found the director of a PLAB training company distributed confidential exam content to students and falsely advertised a 100 per cent pass rate, and erased him from the medical register.
The tribunal found that Salehi, as director of Common Stations, had elicited confidential information about the content of the PLAB part 2 exam from candidates — causing those candidates to breach the terms and conditions of the test — and used it to create and distribute teaching materials that gave Common Stations students an unfair advantage. Former students’ statements published on the company’s website and Facebook groups made the scale of the leak plain. One testimonial read: “All the stations were exactly word by word the same as we were taught and I already knew the diagnosis/differentials/what questions to ask etc before going into the cubical… it was like magic!!!” Another said: “He spoon-fed all of us; he told us exactly what we needed to know for the exam.” Others said they were taught “exactly what came in the exam,” adding “this exam cannot be made any easier as Dr hamed has made it.”
The tribunal also examined the company’s advertising. It was proved that Salehi made social media posts and distributed leaflets stating that Common Stations had achieved a 100 per cent pass rate in PLAB 2; on whether those pass-rate claims were themselves true, the tribunal made no finding of fact either way. Chloe Fairley, counsel for the GMC, told the hearing that helping students cheat using confidential exam information showed a “flagrant disregard” for the professional standards doctors are required to operate under, and that Salehi should have been acting with “honesty and integrity” rather than enabling PLAB candidates to cheat, with a risk to patient safety if doctors were not genuinely being tested. The allegations of distributing information and teaching materials against Salehi were proven, and he was struck off the medical register as of September 30, 2026.
Public Reaction and Consequences
The case surfaced publicly when the MPTS outcome and its surrounding coverage landed in October 2026, with national and regional reporting on a scandal that had quietly run from a folder found in an exam centre in February 2019 to erasure from the medical register seven years later. The GMC’s head of assessment had told the tribunal in a 2019 witness statement that the folder’s contents were “clearly designed to provide candidates with information prior to the PLAB test to which they are not entitled… In other words it is designed to enable candidates to cheat.” The tribunal’s findings against both Common Stations figures — Salehi as director, Elmira Yaghmaei as tutor — removed from the register the two people running the company whose materials had compromised the exam’s integrity.
Current Status
Salehi, struck off as of September 30, 2026, is erased from the medical register and cannot practise medicine in the UK. Common Stations Limited, the company he directed, was the vehicle for the conduct the tribunal found proved, and the testimonial record of spoon-fed exam content remains public on the company’s own website and Facebook groups. The tribunal’s determination means the man who ran the academy and marketed its results is removed from the profession whose gateway exam he helped candidates bypass.
Impact on Their Career/Life
Salehi’s erasure ends his registered medical career in the United Kingdom, and the tribunal’s published findings — the elicitation of confidential exam content, the distribution of teaching materials built on it, and the proved 100 per cent pass-rate advertising — attach permanently to his name in the regulator’s record. The case’s regulatory significance goes beyond one Romford academy: it established that a director who recycles candidates’ confidential exam recollections into “teaching” materials is struck off for it, and the MPTS outcome landed alongside Yaghmaei’s erasure as a matched pair — the tutor who taught the leaked stations and the director who ran and advertised the company. For the GMC, the case tested the security of the PLAB exam system itself, beginning with an internal review of how confidential test information had escaped into a commercial course.