Publication time limits, and why MedicWatch keeps records longer

The GMC's 10-year erasure rule

The General Medical Council removes erasure records from its register after ten years from the date of erasure. After that, the GMC's online register no longer shows that the doctor was ever struck off. The original tribunal determination remains a public record but is no longer findable through the GMC's own search.

The GMC's stated rationale for the rule is rehabilitation and proportionality. From the patient's perspective, the consequence is that information that was deliberately published for public benefit becomes invisible after a decade — even though the public interest in being able to find it does not diminish.

The NMC's rolling 3-month publication window

The Nursing and Midwifery Council retains hearing outcomes on its main hearings page for the most recent three months. Older outcomes are no longer linked from the NMC's index. The decisions themselves remain accessible if you have the URL, but they are not findable through the NMC's own listings.

The DPHS / GDC archive

The Dental Professionals Hearings Service maintains a decisions bank that holds recent decisions. Older decisions can age out of the index. Like the NMC, the underlying determinations remain publicly available if you have the URL but are not listed on the regulator's own site.

Why MedicWatch retains the records longer

MedicWatch retains the persistent record under the journalism exemption in UK data protection law. The exemption allows publishing personal data for the purpose of journalism, where the publisher reasonably believes it to be in the public interest and reasonably believes that compliance with the relevant data protection provisions would be incompatible with the journalistic purposes.

Our editorial position is that there is a clear public interest in patients being able to find regulatory history concerning a UK healthcare professional, and that this public interest does not expire after ten years (or three months). A patient choosing a consultant deserves to know whether that consultant has been erased and restored, even if the GMC's own record no longer shows the erasure.

How we balance retention against fairness

Persistent retention is not unlimited. We provide a takedown and corrections process for cases where there is a clear factual error, where a determination has been quashed on appeal, where the underlying source has been formally retracted by the regulator, or where a privacy concern outweighs the public interest. Each request is reviewed against the source determination by the editorial team.

We do not remove pages simply because the practitioner prefers them not to exist. Regulator decisions are published precisely so they can be found by patients and the public; preference alone is not a basis for removal.