Matthew Goodey

Introduction

Matthew Goodey is a former paramedic who was struck off the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC) register in April 2026 after a Conduct and Competence Committee panel found a pattern of inappropriate, demeaning comments to vulnerable service users and a separate act of dishonesty toward his own regulator. The panel found that between 2020 and 2021 Goodey made disparaging remarks about a service user’s weight, told another that self-harming would not kill him, and laughed at a third. It further found that he failed to tell the HCPC about his suspension and dismissal from employment in 2023, and that the concealment was dishonest. The panel concluded the conduct was fundamentally incompatible with continued registration and struck him off.

Background Information

Goodey was registered with the HCPC as a paramedic, a regulated profession whose registrants treat acutely unwell and injured people, including patients with mental-health crises, obesity, and other vulnerabilities that make them dependent on the practitioner’s professionalism. The comments found proved spanned three encounters with service users in 2020 and 2021. The dishonesty particular arose later: Goodey was suspended from his employment on 1 March 2023 and dismissed on 28 March 2023, and paramedics are required to inform the HCPC promptly of such employment events, because they bear directly on a registrant’s fitness to practise. He did not do so. By the time the case reached a final hearing, listed over four days in April 2026 by virtual video conference before a Conduct and Competence Committee panel, the allegation combined the service-user comments and the regulator deception.

The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation

Adjudicated finding, not an allegation. A HCPC Conduct and Competence Committee panel made these findings in April 2026 on the balance of probabilities. They are civil-standard regulatory determinations; the record covered here involved no criminal proceedings.

The panel found proved that on or around 17 July 2020 Goodey communicated inappropriately with Service User F, telling her “you’re a big girl”, saying “I bet you come from a house where you were always told to finish your plate”, suggesting she ask someone to push her in a sack barrow because of her weight, and saying “You don’t want to be sitting there in a chair with your feet up eating chips, chips and more chips” — each found as spoken, or words to that effect. On or around 16 November 2020 he told Service User D that “self-harming won’t kill you but smoking will”. On or around 21 September 2021 he laughed at Service User E, a patient. The panel also found that he failed to inform the HCPC in a timely manner of his suspension on 1 March 2023 and his dismissal on 28 March 2023, and that in doing so he was dishonest, knowing he was required to report them. On sanction the panel described the dishonesty as a very serious instance, repeated over an extended period, because it involved not being honest and accountable to the HCPC as his regulator, undermining public trust in the profession and the regulator, and concluded the conduct found proved was “fundamentally incompatible with continued registration.”

Public Reaction and Consequences

The panel determined that striking off was the appropriate and proportionate order, directing the Registrar to remove Goodey from the register. Its reasoning tied the two strands together: the remarks to service users went to basic respect for patients in vulnerable situations, while the concealment of his suspension and dismissal attacked the regulatory system itself, extending the dishonesty across years rather than a single incident. The decision, including the verbatim remarks as recorded in the allegation schedule and the panel’s sanction analysis, is published on the HCPTS hearings site, the tribunal service of the HCPC. No criminal charge arose from the record covered here; the case was concluded entirely within the professional-regulatory track. The names of the service users are anonymised in the published decision as Service Users D, E and F.

Current Status

Goodey was struck off on 17 April 2026, the final day of the four-day hearing. He is no longer a registered paramedic and cannot practise under the protected title while the striking off order stands. His dismissal from employment in March 2023 and the striking off in 2026 together mean he has not held front-line clinical work in the years between. The panel’s published findings are the authoritative public record of his conduct; no separate public statement from Goodey is recorded in the decision materials covered here. Restoration would require a fresh application to a future panel and evidence of remediation of both the communication findings and the dishonesty.

Impact on Their Career/Life

The order is terminal for his paramedic career while it stands, and the dishonesty finding weighs on any restoration attempt. The case sits in a string of HCPC striking-offs where remarks about patients’ weight, appearance or self-harm were treated as fundamentally incompatible with registration, and it adds the aggravating layer of a registrant hiding his own employment sanction from the regulator for years. For paramedic employers, it shows the reporting duty on suspension and dismissal being enforced through the striking-off jurisdiction rather than as an administrative footnote. For service users, it records the regulator confirming that mockery of the very people ambulance services exist to help ends a registration, not merely draws a warning.

Sources

• HCPTS, “Matthew Goodey — Final Hearing, Conduct and Competence Committee, Struck off,” April 2026. source