Peter J Burningham

Introduction

Peter J Burningham is a former paramedic who was registered with the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC) under registration number PA21044 and worked as a team leader for the London Ambulance Service. On 16 October 2025, a panel of the Health and Care Professions Tribunal Service (HCPTS) struck him off the register at the end of a substantive hearing, finding his fitness to practise currently impaired by reason of five convictions recorded at Reading Crown Court on 16 April 2024 — two for distributing indecent photographs of children and three for making them — for which he was jailed for two years and four months. The panel found his conduct incompatible with continued registration and imposed an interim suspension of up to 18 months to cover any appeal.

Background Information

The record identifies Burningham as a paramedic holding HCPC registration PA21044. Press reporting of the case names his employer, the London Ambulance Service: the Chronicle described an outwardly respectable team leader praised for his work during the Covid-19 pandemic. Pauline Cranmer, the service’s chief paramedic, said: “We absolutely condemn the criminal behaviour of Mr Burningham.” The Chronicle quoted her adding that his “criminal charges relate to his behaviour outside of work and did not involve our patients” and that “he was dismissed from our Service as soon as his criminality came to light and was referred to the relevant regulatory body.” His MedicWatch profile records erasure as his most recent published outcome and notes his registration status as not yet verified.

The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation

Convictions are facts; striking-off is the regulatory consequence. The convictions below are criminal facts, which the panel proved to itself from the conviction record. What the HCPTS panel assessed was their regulatory consequence: whether those convictions impaired Burningham’s fitness to practise and, if so, what sanction the public interest required.

On 16 April 2024 at Reading Crown Court, Burningham was convicted of two counts of distributing indecent photographs of children and three counts of making them, in Categories A, B and C, the most serious. The Chronicle reports that the offending ran from August 2020 to December 2022, that a police raid in January 2023 found 260 Category A images on his devices — part of hundreds depicting the abuse of children, some younger than a year old — and that his search history included ‘incest’, ‘baby boy rape’ and ‘kid sex’. In exchanges read out in court, he was reported to have suggested to another offender taking work at a maternity ward to abuse the babies there, and volunteering at Romanian orphanages. The sentencing judge, Alan Blake, told him: “Despite your protestations, it seems to me, from the material available on your devices, that there was some sexual interest in children.” Jailing him for two years and four months, he called the behaviour ‘destructive and deeply concerning’, and ordered sex-offender registration on release, with half the sentence served on licence.

Before the panel, the convictions and the statutory ground were proved; the allegation was impairment by reason of them. The panel found current impairment on both personal and public components. It recorded mitigation — a previously unblemished career, expressed remorse and guilty pleas — against aggravation: images he had not only viewed but distributed, said to involve moving images of the abuse of very young children in distress and pain, some as young as two. He blamed crystal methamphetamine addiction, telling the tribunal: “There is no excuse for what I did but I do believe I would never have acted out of character and so terribly without the influence of drugs.” The panel said it had no evidence to support his assertions, found a lack of remediation and insight, and held that he continued to minimise his responsibility by attributing his behaviour to the addiction. On that basis it decided his conduct was incompatible with continued registration and struck him off.

Public Reaction and Consequences

The reaction on the record is institutional: the London Ambulance Service dismissed him as soon as his criminality came to light and referred him to the regulator, Cranmer’s statement setting that position out publicly. The Chronicle reported the sentencing in detail; Your Local Guardian reported the striking-off, noting he would be barred from the profession indefinitely. The consequences ran from dismissal through a custodial sentence with sex-offender registration to erasure from the HCPC register, with the interim suspension bridging any appeal. Judge Blake’s remarks on images of children “physically and mentally ruined by sustained abuse” framed the public interest the panel later found impaired.

Current Status

Burningham was struck off the HCPC register by the panel’s decision of 16 October 2025, with an interim suspension order in place for the appeal period, subject to a maximum of 18 months; the interim order is not a finding of fault. Striking off means removal from the register and no entitlement to practise as a paramedic in the UK unless a future restoration application succeeds — erasure of this kind is reviewable after a minimum of five years. His MedicWatch profile notes his registration status as not yet verified and points readers to the official HCPC register for his current position, including whether any appeal was pursued.

Impact on Their Career/Life

Striking off ended a career the sentencing court had heard praised for pandemic service. The case shows the two-layer consequence of this criminality: the court’s sentence, and the register’s separate answer — the panel did not retry the offending, it asked what five convictions for distributing and making images of very young children said about present fitness to practise, and concluded the register could not hold him. It also shows the limits of the addiction explanation: the panel accepted remorse and guilty pleas in mitigation, yet found the drug-use account an unsupported minimisation and the absence of remediation and insight decisive. Beyond the determination, the published record contains no information about his circumstances since the decision.

Sources

• *MedicWatch, “HCPTS panel strikes off Peter Burningham over child-image convictions” (HCPC determination, substantive hearing, decision dated 16 October 2025) — source
• *MedicWatch, “Peter J Burningham — Paramedic · Health and Care Professions Council PA21044” — source
• *Reading Chronicle (Charlie Masters), “London Ambulance Service team leader had ‘baby boy’ sex assault photos” — source
• *Your Local Guardian (Josh Bolton), “Former London Ambulance Service paramedic struck off” — source