William Smethurst

Introduction

William Smethurst is a radiographer who was registered with the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC) under registration number RA64547 and worked at Blackpool Victoria Hospital, part of Blackpool Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. On 9 September 2026 a panel of the Health and Care Professions Tribunal Service (HCPTS) ordered that he be struck off the register, ending a regulatory case built on explicit photographs he took of himself at the hospital and a dishonest denial of them during his employer’s investigation.

The striking-off order was the final step in a two-year sanctions chain. A 2024 panel found his fitness to practise impaired by misconduct and suspended him for nine months; review hearings in March 2025, April 2026 and June 2026 each extended the suspension before the September 2026 panel directed erasure, to take effect on 19 October 2026.

Background Information

The published record consists of regulator material, and it identifies Smethurst only by profession, registration number and workplace: a radiographer — an allied health professional who produces medical images used in diagnosis — holding HCPC registration RA64547 and associated with Blackpool Victoria Hospital. The allegation against him referred to photographs taken “in work, on duty, in uniform, in clinical areas” of that hospital. Beyond this, the sources give no details of his training, career or personal history, and this page does not speculate.

The events that triggered the case unfolded inside the Trust. On 23 June 2022, according to the allegation, Smethurst was interviewed as part of Blackpool Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust’s local investigation and denied taking explicit photographs of himself in the workplace. The matter subsequently went to the HCPC, whose Conduct and Competence Committee handled the proceedings, including the later reviews.

The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation

Adjudicated by regulator, not a criminal case. The 2024 findings come from an HCPTS panel determination, decided on the balance of probabilities. They are regulatory findings, not criminal convictions, and no criminal prosecution is recorded in the published material.

The allegation, as recorded by the HCPTS, had two strands. The first was that on an unknown date Smethurst took indecent and sexually explicit photographs of himself on his mobile phone whilst “in work, on duty, in uniform, in clinical areas of Blackpool Victoria Hospital”, and that this conduct was sexually motivated. The second was that on 23 June 2022 he denied during an interview in the Trust’s local investigation that he had taken explicit photographs of himself in the workplace, and that the denial was dishonest because he knew what he had said was not true. The allegation concluded that these matters constituted misconduct and that his fitness to practise was impaired.

In 2024 the panel found the misconduct proved and his fitness to practise impaired, imposing a nine-month suspension. A later review record summarises the basis of those findings as “sexually motivated misconduct in taking explicit photographs at work and dishonestly denying doing so during an employer investigation”.

Public Reaction and Consequences

The published sources document regulatory consequences rather than any social-media reaction. The case moved through a series of review hearings, each assessing whether the original nine-month suspension remained necessary and each finding the risk undiminished.

28 March 2025 — the panel found no reduction in risk, citing no evidence of insight, remediation or maintained professional skills, and extended the suspension by 12 months rather than striking him off, treating the serious misconduct as remediable with meaningful engagement.
15 April 2026 — the panel extended the suspension “for a period of 02 months” past what would otherwise have been its expiry on 19 April 2026.
5 June 2026 — the panel extended the suspension for four months from 19 June 2026, with a further review required before 19 October 2026, taking a recent email as “some indication of willingness to engage” while still finding no sufficient insight or remediation.

At the March 2025 review the panel weighed mitigating factors — Smethurst “indicated underlying health issues which appeared to have made it more difficult for him to engage with the process”, and there were no clinical or competency concerns — against aggravating factors including the continuing lack of evidence of insight and remorse, the absence of any apology or acknowledgement of the impact on the profession’s reputation, and no evidence of continuing professional development to maintain his skills.

Current Status

Smethurst has been struck off the HCPC register. The striking-off order was made on 9 September 2026 and takes effect on 19 October 2026 — shortly after this page’s date — so he remains suspended from practice until the order comes into force. His regulator-profile page records erasure as his most recent published outcome.

The September 2026 panel found continuing impairment on both the personal and public components. It found “no evidence of reflection, insight, remediation, training or remorse” and no meaningful engagement with the review process, and concluded that conditions of practice would not address the attitudinal concerns and that another suspension would achieve nothing. The sanction is regulatory: no criminal conviction appears in the published record.

Impact on Their Career/Life

Erasure removes Smethurst from the register of practitioners able to practise as a radiographer in the UK, bringing his registration — and his working life at Blackpool Victoria Hospital, unrecorded beyond these proceedings — to an end. By the time of the striking-off order he had already been unable to practise for more than two years under the original and repeatedly extended suspensions.

The panel’s reasoning makes any return unlikely: it identified attitudinal failures that had persisted through four review hearings across eighteen months, with none of the reflection, insight, remediation or training whose absence every panel had recorded. The June 2026 panel’s decision to allow one further period of engagement was overtaken three months later by the September panel’s conclusion that no further suspension would serve any purpose.

Sources

*MedicWatch, “HCPTS orders William Smethurst to be struck off following suspension review”, 9 September 2026 — source
*MedicWatch, “HCPTS panel extends William Smethurst’s suspension for four months”, 5 June 2026 — source
*MedicWatch, “HCPTS panel extends William Smethurst’s suspension”, 28 March 2025 — source
*MedicWatch, “William Smethurst — Suspension (2 months)”, 15 April 2026 — source
*MedicWatch, “William Smethurst — Struck off the register | Radiographer RA64547” — source