Regulated (Self-)Regulation: A New Paradigm for Controlling the Professions?

Self-regulation has long been a defining characteristic of the regulation of professional activities in the UK. In this paper, I suggest that recent developments, including increased lay participation in professional regulation, the creation of new state regulatory structures, the transformation of regulation from a series of life events to an ongoing duty to account for oneself, and the creation of a new tier of independent ’meso-regulators’, constitute the emergence of a new paradigm. Prime accountability is no longer from the individual professional to the collective profession. Rather it is from the individual practitioner through the professional body to independent regulators. However, by locating the public interest in independent and unaccountable regulatory structures, this new paradigm may fail in its aim of securing public trust in professions. Regulation- in a broad sense- is a defining characteristic of the profession. Even if professionalization is taken to be no more than the achieving by on