Web Analytics

Role Description – Deputy Director, Professional Regulation

Job Title: Deputy Director – Professional Regulation
Directorate: Professional Regulation
Department: Executive Team – Professional Regulation
Grade: 11
Standard/Premium: Premium
Reports to: Executive Director of Professional Regulation
Team Management: Three Assistant Directors
DBS Status: No check required/basic check/standard check/ enhanced check

Role purpose

Reporting to the Executive Director of Professional Regulation, this role provides corporate, legal and operational regulatory leadership across all Fitness to Practise casework functions.

The post holder ensures that:

  • Regulation is compliant, proportionate and fair across all four UK countries.
  • Operational processes deliver the highest legal integrity, quality, timeliness to reach the outcome that best protects the public at the earliest opportunity.
  • Teams apply consistent legal and evidential standards, safeguarding principles and proportionate risk-based decision making across the FtP lifecycle.
  • Casework policies, governance and data-driven regulatory improvement are embedded and compliant with legislation, obligations and best practice.

The role holder must lead by example, modelling NMC values and driving cultural change that promotes trust, learning, professional challenge and compassion in supporting public safety.

In addition to their primary accountability to the Executive Director of Professional Regulation, the post holder will hold a dotted-line professional accountability to the General Counsel, as the NMC’s Head of Legal Profession. This ensures consistent legal standards, professional leadership, and alignment with the NMC’s Legal Competency Framework across all regulatory legal services.

Acting as the ‘Intelligent Client’ for the Professional Regulation directorate, the post holder will identify, source, and oversee the provision of internal and external legal services required to support the directorate’s casework and strategic objectives. This includes ensuring quality, efficiency, value for money, and alignment with the NMC’s overall legal service review.

Key accountabilities

Corporate Legal & Regulatory Casework Leadership

  • Provide senior operational and legal leadership across all FtP operational functions, ensuring defensible decision-making, statutory compliance and adherence to evidential standards.
  • Lead end-to-end regulatory delivery for Screening, Investigation, Case Examiners, Case Management, Adjudication and CPP, ensuring consistent legal reasoning, safeguarding principles and public protection.
  • Guide the operational implementation of the revised NMC [Fitness to Practise] Rules 2004 and the NMC [Practise Committees] Rules 2008 following the conclusion of the consultation.

Act as adviser to the Executive on complex Fitness to Practise casework, and in

  • consultation with General Counsel on matters of governance, risk escalation and enforcement approaches.
  • Ensure all core processes align with modern regulatory approaches, equality duties, human rights principles and fair, equitable outcomes for the public and registrants. Collaborate with EDI colleagues and experts to remove bias from our FtP processes.
  • Work in partnership with the General Counsel to ensure that legal standards, risk management and casework advice across Professional Regulation meet the NMC’s professional expectations for quality and consistency.
  • Provide professional leadership for FtP lawyers within the directorate, ensuring alignment with the Head of Legal Profession’s guidance, training and development framework.

Strategic Oversight & Operational Excellence

  • Deliver a unified FtP operational strategy that ensures consistency, national alignment and measurable casework performance improvement.
  • Lead modernisation of FtP processes, ensuring technology, governance and case management systems support efficient, fair proportionate and high-quality regulatory outcomes.
  • Collaborate with colleagues in the Transformation and Technology Services directorate to ensure change and improvement activity is practical and impactful for the Professional Regulation directorate.
  • Closely collaborate with the General Counsel team to support their oversight and management of cross-NMC legal risk.
  • Drive innovation, continuous learning and smarter enforcement, reducing complexity, delay and duplication and realise associated benefits and efficiencies.
  • Act as the ‘Intelligent Client’ for legal services within Professional Regulation, identifying needs, commissioning and managing external providers in collaboration with the General Counsel’s office to ensure value for money and joined-up legal delivery.
  • Ensure that internal and external legal advice is used strategically to strengthen decision-making, avoid duplication, and develop internal legal capability.

Performance, Quality & Risk Management

Oversee casework quality assurance, performance standards and audit activity across FtP operations, ensuring that learning feeds into improvement, training, and policy change.

  • Establish data-driven risk governance, enabling early detection of harm, escalating high-risk cases and delivering safeguarding responses in partnership with system regulators.
  • Act as senior point of accountability for internal and external audits, inspection bodies and statutory requests.
  • Act as the senior escalation point for legal advice on casework within the Professional Regulation directorate.
  • Ensure mechanisms exist for consistent feedback loops between FtP casework teams and the General Counsel’s legal assurance framework, promoting reflective learning and continuous improvement.

Stakeholder, Legal & System Engagement

  • Build high-level relationships with registrants’ representatives, education and employer organisations, legal bodies, regulators and governments across the UK.
  • Work collaboratively with the General Counsel team to build a one-NMC legal community. Contribute to the nurturing of a one-NMC legal community through professional leadership.
  • Ensure the FtP directorate is understood, trusted and visible in the regulatory landscape as a leader in modern, fair and proportionate regulation.
  • Work with the Assistant Directors of Legal to respond to regulatory changes arising from high profile inquiries.
  • Represent the NMC at formal inquiries, strategic multi-agency risk forums, legal conferences and regulatory roundtables.

Directorate Leadership & People Management

  • Provide inspiring leadership that empowers Assistant Directors and their teams to innovate, learn, and deliver excellent services.
  • Lead succession planning, talent development and values-based performance management for operational teams, addressing capability and conduct proactively.
  • Champion a compassionate, person-centred culture, supporting staff wellbeing in a complex regulatory environment.

Professional Link to the Head of Legal Profession

  • Maintain a dotted-line professional relationship with the General Counsel (Head of Legal Profession).
  • Contribute to the strategic development of the NMC’s legal profession through participation in the Legal Leadership Group and other cross-directorate legal forums.
  • Ensure the Professional Regulation legal teams comply with the NMC’s Legal Competency Framework, development pathways and professional standards.
  • Provide insight and data to the General Counsel on external legal spend, quality, and performance for continuous improvement of legal service provision.
  • Act as the professional bridge between the operational FtP legal teams and the wider NMC legal community.

People management

  • Provide strong leadership and direction and keep performance improvement under review and ensure that performance targets are met.
  • Facilitate and support the teams to enable them to achieve their objectives.
  • Provide consistent performance management by providing regular feedback, conducting formal reviews, and identifying and addressing business-focussed training and development needs.
  • Manage issues relating to conduct and capability, ensuring that such issues are dealt with in a focussed and timely manner.

Other responsibilities

There are a number of standard duties and responsibilities that all employees, irrespective of their role and level of seniority within the NMC, are expected to be familiar with and adhere to.

  • Comply at all times with the requirements of health and safety regulations to ensure their own wellbeing and that of their colleagues.
  • Promote and comply with NMC policies on diversity and equality both in the delivery of services and treatment of others.
  • Ensure confidentiality at all times, only releasing confidential information obtained during the course of employment to those acting in an official capacity in accordance with the provisions of the Data Protection Act 1998 and its amendments.
  • Comply with NMC protocols on the appropriate use of telephone, email and internet facilities.
  • Comply with the principles of risk management in relation to individual and corporate responsibilities.
  • Comply with NMC policies and procedures as compiled on the organisation’s intranet.
  • Collaborate closely with the General Counsel and the wider Legal Leadership Group to help build and sustain a “One NMC Legal Community,” sharing learning, professional development and consistent legal standards.

Standard responsibilities

There are a number of standard duties and responsibilities that all employees, irrespective of their role and level of seniority within the NMC, are expected to be familiar with and adhere to.

  • Comply at all times with the requirements of health and safety regulations to ensure their own wellbeing and that of their colleagues.
  • Promote and comply with NMC policies including diversity and equality both in the delivery of services and treatment of others.
  • Ensure confidentiality at all times, only releasing confidential information obtained during the course of employment to those acting in an official capacity in accordance with the provisions of the General Data Protection Regulation and the Data Protection Act 2018.
  • Comply with NMC protocols on the appropriate use of telephone, email and internet facilities.
  • Comply with the principles of risk management in relation to individual and corporate responsibilities.
  • Comply with NMC policies and procedures as compiled on the organisation’s intranet.
  • In addition to your main areas of responsibility, our values (integrity, fairness, respect, equity and effectiveness) and behaviours are required from all our people for successful delivery of the NMC Strategy.

This job description is not exhaustive and as such the post holder is expected to be flexible. Any changes will only be made following a discussion with the post holder.