Nursing & Midwifery Council v Moras Masih

On an application under Article 31(8) of the Nursing and Midwifery Order 2001, the court exercises an original jurisdiction and must decide for itself whether an interim order remains necessary. It must scrutinise current, candid evidence, including the allegations, supporting material, procedural progress, delay, prejudice, remediation and current risk to the public. Review duties under Article 31(6) and (11) are mandatory, but missing a review deadline does not automatically extinguish the order. Repeated extensions are not routine: an interim order is a holding measure, and the regulator must progress the substantive case fairly and promptly. Where delay, stale and reduced allegations, weak or incomplete evidence and serious professional prejudice outweigh the demonstrated current risk, an extension should be refused.

The Nursing & Midwifery Council applied under Article 31(8) of the Nursing and Midwifery Order 2001 for a six-month extension of an interim conditions of practice order imposed on the respondent nurse. The application followed repeated panel reviews and High Court extensions, while allegations dating from 2019 to 2022 remained unresolved. A substantive hearing in November 2025 dismissed many charges but was adjourned part-heard. Subsequent reviews and evidence were affected by delay and procedural failures. In June 2026, a panel varied and continued the conditions. The central questions were whether missed review deadlines affected the order and whether its continuation remained necessary for public protection or otherwise justified.

Disposition. The application for a six-month extension was refused.

1. Review obligations. Article 31(6) and Article 31(11) use mandatory language. The NMC breached Article 31(6)(b) by failing to review the order when the November 2025 dismissal of many charges supplied relevant new evidence. It also breached Article 31(11)(a) because the order extended on 9 December 2025 was not reviewed within six months. Those breaches did not automatically terminate the order. Article 31(5) did not identify a missed review deadline as an event causing an order to cease, and the June review was only a few days late.
2. Applicable approach. The court exercised an original jurisdiction under Article 31(8), rather than merely reviewing the regulator’s decision. It applied the guidance in General Medical Council v Hiew [2007] EWCA Civ 369, also reported at [2007] 1 WLR 2007. The NMC bore the civil burden of proof. The court had to consider the gravity of the allegations, the evidence, risk to patients, reasons for delay and prejudice to the registrant. It was not bound by, or required to defer to, the panel’s opinion. Consistently with Sandler v General Medical Council [2010] EWHC 1029 (Admin), it could consider new developments, fresh evidence and arguments.
3. Evidence and delay. The regulator’s evidence had to be candid, complete, focused and current. It needed to identify the live charges, the evidence supporting them, the procedural history, the current conditions and the present risk. The NMC’s evidence omitted or misstated these matters and left the court to reconstruct the case. The court also took account of the guidance in Nursing and Midwifery Council v Persand [2023] EWHC 3356 (Admin) and Nursing and Midwifery Council v JH and JF [2025] CSOH 51 that delay may affect rights and proportionality, and that an extension application is not a rubber-stamp exercise.
4. Application of the test. The interim order had lasted for more than three years. The allegations had been substantially reduced, remained unproved and were stale. The NMC had not shown the evidence supporting the remaining charges or explained why remediation did not reduce current risk. Some conditions did not protect the public and others were excessively onerous. Mr Masih suffered serious professional, financial and personal prejudice, including the threatened loss of registration. The NMC therefore failed to prove that continuation was necessary for public protection, and no separate public-interest justification was established.

The judgment records successive High Court extension applications and reviews, but identifies no lower-court decision or appeal.