Ministers should introduce statutory regulation for counsellors and psychotherapists to protect the public from abuse, according to a report that has been hailed as a “watershed moment” for the profession.
Unlike most other healthcare roles, including doctors, midwives and osteopaths, “psychotherapist” and “counsellor” are not protected titles nor statutorily regulated professions in the UK.
This means that anyone can call themselves a therapist without a qualification, and can continue to practise even after an episode of misconduct, under a system that is poorly understood by the public.
For the first time, a report from an independent commission established by the professional bodies that represent counsellors and psychotherapists is calling for statutory regulation, to boost confidence in the profession and protect the public from the growing number of cases of abuse and malpractice. At the moment the professional bodies have their own voluntary registration schemes, which are accredited by the Professional Standards Authority.
The report, the culmination of an independent review launched in October 2025 by the Commission for the Future of Counselling and Psychotherapy, argues that counsellors and psychotherapists are an untapped resource that could fill a mental health treatment gap estimated at about 1.8 million people on waiting lists. Practitioners told the commission they had extra capacity, which the report estimated could cumulatively provide more than 370,000 hours of additional therapy appointments every week.
The commission co-chair Phil Hope, a former Labour minister for care services, said: “For me, the report became a bit of a watershed moment for the profession, a real landmark of the opportunity there is for the government, and all its departments really, to unlock that potential.”
Source: The Guardian, 2 November 2026
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