Counselling in the United Kingdom

In the United Kingdom, counselling is not under statutory regulation, and is overseen and supported by several organisations, none of which are officially recognised by the government.

In 2007 the Health Professions Council (HPC), which is independent of any professional body, released a white paper, Trust Assurance and Safety – The Regulation of Health Professionals in the 21st Century, which said that the Government intended to introduce statutory regulation for psychotherapists and counsellors.

The HPC set up a working group of stakeholders, known as a Professional Liaison Group, to consider and make recommendations to the HPC about how psychotherapists and counsellors might be regulated, in light of the statements made in the white paper. The HPC held a public consultation on the PLG recommendations, which ran for three months in 2009. Following the consultation, the PLG was reconvened and had its last meeting on 2 February 2011.

In February 2011, the Government published a command paper, Enabling Excellence, which set out the coalition government's policy on professional regulation. The paper outlined a system of what it called "assured voluntary registration" and said that in the future statutory regulation will only be considered where there is a "compelling case", and where "voluntary registers are not considered sufficient to manage this risk". Later that month, the HPC's Chief Executive Marc Seale wrote to Anne Milton MP, then Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Public Health, seeking clarification of the coalition government's policy on the statutory regulation of psychotherapists and counsellors.

At its meeting on 31 March 2011 the Council discussed the response received from Anne Milton MP. The letter said: "...it is not currently our intention to proceed with statutory regulation of psychotherapists and counsellors".

The main UK counselling organisation is the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP). It grew from the Standing Conference for the Advancement of Counselling, a grouping of organisations inaugurated in 1970 at the instigation of the National Council for Voluntary Organisations. Membership was extended to include individuals when in 1977, with the aid of a grant from the Home Office Voluntary Service Unit, the British Association for Counselling was founded. In 1978 the headquarters was moved from London to Rugby courtesy of the National Marriage Guidance Council which provided free accommodation to help the association establish itself.

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