Shiv Kumar Bhimasani
Introduction
Shiv Kumar Bhimasani is a physiotherapist who was registered with the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC) under registration number PH71833, having first registered with its predecessor, the Health Professions Council (HPC), on 3 March 2005. On 15 March 2024, at the end of a final hearing that had run from 11 March, a Conduct and Competence Committee panel of the Health and Care Professions Tribunal Service (HCPTS) struck him off the register. The panel found that he had been convicted of assaulting a woman by beating in October 2020 — convicted after trial, and sentenced to a 150-hour community order and a restraining order — and of three driving offences in 2011, and that for more than ten years he dishonestly concealed every one of those convictions from his regulator, ticking “no change” boxes on registration renewals in 2012 and 2020 and never making the disclosure his standards of conduct required. The striking-off order took effect on 11 April 2024.
Background Information
The determination identifies Bhimasani as a physiotherapist registered since 3 March 2005. From 22 March 2021 he worked as a Band 6 locum physiotherapist at the Kingsway site in Derby, part of Derbyshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust, engaged through a recruitment agency. His role covered urgent physiotherapy patients in the community and on hospital wards, with waiting-list management; he treated adult patients only, and his line manager saw him once or twice a week.
The HCPC received a referral from the Trust on 2 September 2021, after an updated Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) certificate obtained through his agency disclosed driving convictions and a conviction for assault that the Trust had previously known nothing about. The referral also raised concerns that he had been accessing patient files not allocated to him — an allegation the panel later examined and did not find proved. MedicWatch, an independent record service that aggregates publicly published decisions of UK healthcare regulators without editorialising their findings, carries the case with erasure (struck off the register) as its outcome, published 15 March 2024.
The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation
Court convictions, plus panel findings of dishonesty. The four convictions were proved before the panel by certified memoranda of conviction under Rule 10(1)(d) of the 2003 Procedure Rules — they are genuine criminal convictions, and the panel’s task was to confirm them. The findings of concealment, false declarations and dishonesty are the panel’s own, made to the civil standard (the balance of probabilities) at a hearing Bhimasani did not attend. One allegation — that he accessed up to 79 service user records without clinical justification — was not proved and is not a finding against him.
The convictions were the foundation of the case. On 19 October 2020, Bhimasani was convicted at South Yorkshire Magistrates’ Court of assaulting Person A by beating her, contrary to section 39 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988. He had pleaded not guilty and was found guilty after trial; the memorandum of conviction, dated 8 January 2021, records a community order of 150 hours’ unpaid work, a restraining order, a victim surcharge and Crown Prosecution Service costs. In April 2011 he had been convicted of three driving offences arising from an accident on the M60: driving without due care and attention, failing to stop after an accident, and failing to give his name and address and to report the accident. He pleaded guilty to all three, was fined and had his licence endorsed with seven penalty points. At the 2011 sentencing hearing, via his representative, he said disqualification from driving would cause him financial hardship and lose him his job as a physiotherapist.
How it all surfaced was an accident of administration, not disclosure. In June 2021 his recruitment agency told his line manager at the Trust that an updated DBS check was coming; asked what it concerned, Bhimasani said he had been caught driving with tyres which were completely worn off. The certificate arrived on 31 August 2021 showing a conviction for battery. On 2 September 2021 the Trust removed him from the premises and referred him to the HCPC the same day. The panel later found he had misrepresented the assault conviction to his manager as a driving matter, when that was clearly not the case.
The concealment findings traced a decade of it. The panel found that on 26 February 2012 he signed his HPC renewal form ticking the box confirming no change to his good character — while his 2011 driving convictions sat undeclared. It found he renewed online in February 2014, February 2016 and February 2018 without ever submitting the manual hard-copy form that registrants with a change in good character were required to use — a requirement the online system itself enforced by blocking electronic renewal. And it found that on 15 May 2020 he signed his HCPC renewal ticking the box confirming no change relating to his good character when that was not the case. It further found he never informed the HPC or the HCPC of any of his convictions, at any point, as the Standards of Conduct, Performance and Ethics required; the panel held that not informing the regulator at all “could not be considered timely in any person’s interpretation or view”. Applying the test in Ivey v Genting Casinos, it concluded all of this was dishonest: he was fully aware of his convictions, knew of the obligation to declare them, and his motive was “to avoid regulatory oversight and/or regulatory action being taken against him”.
One allegation failed. The HCPC alleged that between 23 March and 2 September 2021 he accessed service user records relating to up to 79 service users without clinical justification. The panel was persuaded he had accessed up to 79 records in that window, but could not conclude the access lacked clinical justification: the two Trust witnesses gave inconsistent accounts of their audit’s colour-coding criteria and of what PARIS system information each had reviewed, the HCPC produced neither the patient records nor screenshots of the “break-glass” prompts, and both witnesses accepted there could be legitimate reasons for such access. The panel concluded it could not rely on the audit’s findings and found the particular not proved. MedicWatch’s record states the same: the record-access allegation was not proved.
On grounds, the panel found particulars 1–4 amounted to the statutory ground of conviction under Article 22(1)(a) of the Health Professions Order 2001. The concealment findings amounted to serious misconduct, breaching SCPE standards 9 (be honest and trustworthy), 9.1 and 9.5 (tell us as soon as possible if you are found guilty of a criminal offence). The panel called the assault conviction, as a conviction for violence, “extremely serious” — and the dishonesty “the most serious of all”: premeditated, repeated, and sustained over ten years (2011–2021) until his employer found out, demonstrating what it called “entrenched attitudinal behaviour in thinking that laws and standards did not apply to him”. Had the Trust not obtained the updated DBS certificate, the panel judged he would likely have continued the deception. It noted too the tangible effect on colleagues: one told the panel she had felt uncomfortable being in a room alone with him after learning of the assault conviction and his failure to disclose it. Fitness to practise was found currently impaired on both the personal and public components, with no insight, remorse or remediation and a real risk of repetition.
On sanction the panel identified no mitigating factors — the testimonials and references he had submitted dated from 2011 and 2020 and were given no weight. The aggravating factors were his non-engagement with the proceedings, the conviction for violence, and dishonesty that was premeditated, repeated and sustained over ten years. A caution, conditions of practice and suspension were all rejected — conditions and suspension require insight and remediability, and the panel had found neither — and the panel concluded this was a case for striking off: dishonesty and violence, serious, persistent and deliberate, incompatible with continued registration. Bhimasani did not attend the hearing; in an email of 1 March 2024 he wrote: “Thank you for your email. I won’t be attending the hearing, which I have already confirmed”. The panel proceeded in his absence under Rule 11.
Public Reaction and Consequences
The published record contains no press coverage of the case and no public statements beyond Bhimasani’s own written submissions of 22 September 2022 and his email declining to attend. In those submissions he said his agency “has always been responsible for disclosing my dbs to the employers” and gave an innocent explanation of the record access — that as a floating physiotherapist during lockdown he had to open patient records to pick patients off lists and arrange appointments. The panel found the agency explanation “not plausible” — it did not address why he had never declared his convictions to his regulator — and the record-access allegation was in any event not proved. The concrete consequences began inside the NHS: removal from the Trust premises on 2 September 2021, the referral to the HCPC the same day, and finally the striking-off decision of 15 March 2024.
Current Status
Bhimasani was struck off the HCPC register by the panel’s decision of 15 March 2024, with the order operative from 11 April 2024. The direction — that the Registrar strike him off — ended his registration once it took effect. MedicWatch records erasure (struck off the register) as his most recent published outcome, last checked 23 September 2026, and directs readers to the official HCPC register for his current status. The published record discloses no appeal.
Impact on Their Career/Life
Striking off ended Bhimasani’s HCPC registration and his ability to work as a physiotherapist in the UK unless a future restoration application succeeds. The shape of the case is what the panel found most damning: not the convictions alone, but the ten years of concealment — renewal after renewal signed while undeclared convictions accumulated, discovered in the end only because an employer’s agency refreshed a DBS check. The panel’s view was that he would likely have continued the deception indefinitely, and that his dishonesty was attitudinal: a belief that laws and standards did not apply to him. Dishonesty of that kind is, on the sanctions policy the panel applied, effectively beyond remedy without evidence of insight — and he offered none, not even by attending. Beyond the determination, the published record contains no information about his circumstances since.