Poppy Sprague
Introduction
Poppy Sprague is a practitioner psychologist who was registered with the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC) under registration number PYL25085. On 16 July 2025, a review panel of the Health and Care Professions Tribunal Service (HCPTS) found her fitness to practise remained impaired and struck her off the register. The case arose from public Facebook content posted between August 2020 and March 2021 that was linked to her professional status, opposed government Covid-19 guidance, discouraged mask use, questioned public-health information and vaccination, suggested vaccination was harmful, and referred to the NHS in terms found to be inaccurate and damaging. The substantive panel had found the posts misconduct and impairment; the second review panel found the attitudinal failings unremedied and her continued registration fundamentally incompatible.
Background Information
The published record identifies Sprague only as a practitioner psychologist holding HCPC registration PYL25085. It does not name an employer or health service organisation, and it does not describe her training or career; this page does not guess at any of them. The posts at the centre of the case were public Facebook content linked to her professional status — the connection to her registration being what distinguished the case from private political expression. Her MedicWatch profile records her most recent published outcome as striking off, decided on 16 July 2025, while noting her registration status as not yet verified and directing readers to the official HCPC register for current details. MedicWatch aggregates regulator outcomes and states it does not editorialise the regulator’s findings.
The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation
Regulatory findings, not a criminal case. The findings below come from HCPTS panels applying the civil standard — the balance of probabilities. They are regulator findings about professional standards, not criminal convictions, and they concern social-media expression rather than clinical conduct.
Between August 2020 and March 2021, Sprague posted public Facebook content, linked to her professional status, that opposed government Covid-19 guidance, discouraged the use of masks, questioned public-health information and vaccination, suggested vaccination was harmful, and referred to the NHS in terms alleged to be inaccurate or damaging. The substantive panel found the posts inappropriate and unprofessional, amounting to misconduct and impairment.
The case did not end there: what converted suspension into erasure was the review trajectory. At the second review, the panel found Sprague had not remedied the underlying attitudinal failings, lacked sufficient insight, and remained unwilling to accept professional regulatory restraints. It found personal and public impairment, a high risk of similar harmful behaviour in another context, and concluded she was fundamentally incompatible with continued registration. The panel’s reasoning located the problem not in the expression of dissenting views as such but in the combination of professional-status linkage, persistent falsehood-adjacent health claims, and an unbroken refusal to engage with the regulatory process.
Public Reaction and Consequences
The published record contains no press coverage of the hearings and no public statements — none from Sprague or from any other party. The concrete consequences recorded across the determinations are the original substantive finding of misconduct and impairment, and the review panel’s striking-off direction of 16 July 2025 after the attitudinal failings were found unremediated.
Current Status
Sprague was struck off the HCPC register by the review panel’s decision of 16 July 2025. Her MedicWatch profile records striking off as her most recent published outcome, notes her registration status as not yet verified, and directs readers to the official HCPC register for her current position.
Impact on Their Career/Life
Striking off ended Sprague’s registration to practise as a practitioner psychologist in the UK unless a future restoration application succeeds. The panel’s route to that outcome matters for how the case is understood: the UK regulator has repeatedly treated pandemic-era health misinformation by registered professionals as a fitness-to-practise issue when the professional’s status amplifies it, and this case shows the escalation mechanic — the substantive panel’s misconduct finding set the baseline, but it was the review panels’ findings of unchanged attitudes and unwillingness to accept regulatory restraint that ended the registration. The incompatibility language is the regulator’s strongest: it forecloses sanctions short of removal regardless of the practitioner’s clinical record.
Beyond the determinations, the published record contains no information about her circumstances since the decision, and nothing on this page should be read as going beyond it.