Health and Care Professions Council determination — substantive hearing
HCPTS panel strikes off Julie Ainley over hospital library book thefts
An HCPTS panel struck off operating department practitioner Julie Ainley after proving her hospital library book theft conviction and failure to report it to the regulator.
MedicWatch editorial · Published 15 February 2024 · Updated 23 September 2026
Erasure (struck off the register)
Data last checked: 23 September 2026Report a correction
What does “struck off the register” mean?
The regulator directed removal from the register in this decision. The decision explains when the direction takes effect and any appeal provisions. Check the official register for the practitioner's current registration status.
Concerning Julie Ainley, operating department practitioner (Health and Care Professions Council ODP040773).
Decision date: 15 February 2024 · Hearing started 14 February 2024 and ended 15 February 2024
In plain English
The HCPTS panel found that Julie Ainley's fitness to practise was impaired after her conviction for stealing hospital library books and her failure to report it to the HCPC. It found no evidence of insight, reflection or remediation and a significant risk of repetition. The panel concluded that her dishonesty was fundamentally incompatible with registration and struck her off.
Charges
Julie Ainley was convicted on 14 July 2022 of stealing books worth more than £800 from York District Hospital between February and March 2022. The HCPC also alleged that she did not inform it of the conviction as soon as possible, that this amounted to misconduct and that her fitness to practise was impaired.
Findings
The panel proved Julie Ainley's theft conviction and her failure to report it to the HCPC. It found the non-reporting amounted to misconduct and that her fitness to practise was impaired on personal and public grounds. With no evidence of insight or remediation and a significant risk of repetition, it found the dishonesty fundamentally incompatible with registration and ordered striking off.
Mitigating and aggravating factors
Mitigating factors
The Registrant pleaded guilty to the offence of theft.
Aggravating factors
The Registrant stole books from the Trust Library for financial gain; Her thefts involved an element of pre-meditation and planning in that she removed security tags from the books and secreted them from the Library, after which she sold them on the internet; Her thefts involved a large number of books and continued over a period of time; Her thefts deprived other users of the library, including those preparing for exams and other Trust employees undertaking continuing professional development, of essential reading matter; Her thefts caused the Trust, as her employer, significant financial loss in having to replace the books which were stolen; and, She has provided the Panel with no evidence of remorse, insight, reflection or remediation, nor has she engaged in these proceedings, with the result that the Panel concluded that there is a significant risk of repetition.
Source
All facts on this page are drawn from the publicly published Health and Care Professions Council determination linked below. MedicWatch does not editorialise the regulator’s findings.
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