Our Annual Report to the Welsh Language Commissioner 2025-26
April 2025 – March 2026
About the Welsh Language Standards
By law, the General Osteopathic Council must comply with the Welsh Language Standards (No. 8) Regulations. The exact standards we must comply with are available to read on our website.
We are committed to treating the Welsh language as we do the English language, because we recognise the importance of Welsh for the people of Wales. As a small regulator, we do our best to support the use of Welsh for those using our regulatory services. This report explains how we have done this from 1 April 2025 to 31 March 2026.
About the GOsC
We regulate osteopathy in the UK, including Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, meaning only those on our Register can legally practise osteopathy in the UK.
Our role is to protect the public and the reputation of the osteopathic profession by setting and maintaining high standards of practice, maintaining a Register of osteopaths who are fit to practise, checking and assuring the quality of undergraduate osteopathic education and training, and investigating concerns about osteopaths.
As of 31 March 2026, there are 164 osteopaths living and/or practising in Wales, and 139 students studying and/or living in Wales. Swansea University is currently the only undergraduate osteopathic education provider in Wales.
We are a small organisation with less than 30 members of staff and with an office that is currently based in London, England. We are governed by our Council which has a statutory requirement to include at least one Welsh member (a person based wholly or mainly in Wales who may be lay or osteopathic) to help us consider and support the needs of Welsh osteopaths, patients and Welsh members of the public when making strategic regulatory decisions.
We currently do not have any Welsh speaking members of staff.
How we have complied with the standards
Between 1 April 2025 and 31 March 2026 our compliance with the standards was mostly business as usual, meaning we managed the existing processes we have in place to allow Welsh speakers to use Welsh if they wish to when accessing our services.
Only a small number of osteopaths on our Register live and/or practise in Wales, so our assumption is that the number of Welsh-speaking osteopathy patients is also relatively low (although we do not have exact numbers). During this period, we did not have patients, students or osteopaths request to access our services in Welsh.
Providing information in Welsh
We continued to provide information in Welsh on our website, and during this period we published the following new information in Welsh:
- Guidance on studying osteopathy with a disability or health condition
- Fitness to Practise Annual Report 2024-25
- Annual Report and Accounts 2024-25
Every few months we send out our student ebulletin to osteopathy students in their penultimate and final years of education, and for those studying in Wales, we also send the ebulletin in Welsh.
During this period we also piloted our Student Forum – a quarterly online meeting with students to discuss the work of the GOsC. We promoted the forum to students in both Welsh and English, and when onboarding students to the forum, we asked them if they would like to receive any information about the forum in Welsh – none required Welsh information. We had one student from Swansea university attend a forum meeting.
We continued to promote our Welsh language services using our social media channels, and in our monthly ebulletin to osteopaths. Information on our services is available on our website.
Consultations
In June 2025 we published a consultation on proposed changes we want to make to the Osteopaths Act 1993 that would allow us to better protect the osteopathic title by broadening the terminology included in our legislation. This means anyone who is not registered with the GOsC but who is using terms associated with the osteopathic title would be breaching the law. Included in our consultation was our assessment of the impact on opportunities to use the Welsh language.
Our assessment noted that currently, the Osteopaths Act 1993 includes protection of title for a person who describes themselves as an osteopath, osteopathic practitioner, osteopathic physician, osteopathist, osteotherapist, or any other kind of osteopath. If a person not registered with the GOsC were to describe themselves using any of these terms in Welsh, they would also breach the law.
This means currently patients and osteopaths in Wales are given equal protection by the Osteopaths Act as those in England, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Any expansion of Section 32 should continue to provide this equal protection across the UK.
In our consultation we acknowledged that while we do not know how many osteopathic patients there are in Wales, a change in legislation broadening the terminology around protection of title in the Act would also afford a greater level of protection to patients in Wales who may be receiving such treatment from people not currently registered with the GOsC.
Even though our assessment found that this approach may not allow for more opportunities to use the Welsh language, it noted that it may in some ways encourage the use of the language by osteopaths and their patients, and those looking to study and practise osteopathy in Wales in the future by strengthening the laws protecting osteopaths and the value of the title.
Using the Welsh language for registration
In January 2026 our new CRM system and database was launched, allowing us to have a fully integrated online Welsh form for Welsh-speaking osteopaths to use to renew their registration. This means we are now fully compliant with standard 20 of the Welsh Language Standards, after previously raising with the Welsh Language Commissioner our limitations due to our old systems.
To date, no osteopaths have renewed their registration using the Welsh form however we continue to promote this to osteopaths on a regular basis.
Further information about our compliance with the Welsh Language Standards
| The number of complaints GOsC received from 1 April 2025 – 31 March 2026 that relate to GOsC’s compliance with the standards: | None |
| The number of employees who have Welsh language skills as of 31 March 2026: | None |
| The number of new and vacant posts that GOsC advertised (excluding governance/non-executive posts) where Welsh language skills were essential: | None |
| The number of new and vacant posts that GOsC advertised (excluding governance/non-executive posts) where Welsh language skills were essential: | None |
| The number of new and vacant posts that GOsC advertised (excluding governance/non-executive posts) where Welsh language skills were essential where Welsh language skills needed to be learnt: | None |
| The number of new and vacant posts that GOsC advertised (excluding governance/non-executive posts) where Welsh language skills were desirable: | None |
| The number of new and vacant posts that GOsC advertised (excluding governance/non-executive posts) where Welsh language skills were not desirable: | 5 |
How to contact us in Welsh
Queries in Welsh can be sent to GOsC by email, WhatsApp or post and will receive a written response in Welsh. Queries sent to us through any of our social media channels (Facebook or LinkedIn) will also receive a response in Welsh. We usually aim to respond to emails and contact through social media within 5 working days. On WhatsApp, we aim to respond within 24 hours.
As we do not currently have a Welsh speaking member of staff, we are unable to answer phone calls in Welsh.
If you would like to contact us about our Welsh language services or the content of this annual report, you can do so by emailing info@osteopathy.org.uk