Who can respond? 

Anyone can respond to a consultation held by NICE, however NICE are only obligated to formally acknowledge and respond to responses submitted by stakeholders registered for the specific guideline. Registration is only open to organisations, not individuals.

However, even if you’re not registered as a stakeholder, your comments will still be seen and reviewed by the Guideline Development Committee and potentially influence change in the final document, but they aren’t obligated to respond to your comments or publish them on the NICE website.

As an individual you could also contribute to a response being submitted by a registered stakeholder organisation; this could be your employer or a charity for example. A full and up to date list of registered stakeholders can be found on the guideline development page on NICE’s website.

If you have comments you’d like us to consider as part of our organisational response, then please send them to publicaffairs@bacp.co.uk We can’t guarantee to include comments in our final response.

Why is responding important?

We need as many counsellors and psychotherapists responding and putting forward a perspective as possible to help us ensure that NICE are left in no doubt that counselling and psychotherapy are effective interventions that the public have a right to access.

How to register as a stakeholder

You can find out if you're eligible and register as a stakeholder on the NICE website. The process is quick and free of charge. 

How to respond to the consultation

NICE consultations follow a very structured process. With the draft guideline, NICE will publish a series of questions to guide your responses and set out the scope of information they will accept.

Please read through this information to ensure your response is as effective as possible. 

NICE will only accept: 

  • one set of comments from each registered stakeholder organisation
  • responses submitted on the pro-forma available from the consultation web page

NICE will not accept:

  • responses that include attachments such as research articles, letters and leaflets
  • any responses submitted after the consultation deadline on 12 January 2022

What happens after the consultation?

At the end of the consultation period, the Guideline Development Committee will discuss the responses received and decide whether any changes are needed to the guideline. They will respond to all comments submitted by registered stakeholders, and to any comments from people who have not registered but which result in a change to the guideline.

All registered stakeholders who comment on the draft guideline will be sent a confidential copy of the final guideline two weeks before publication.

All the comments and responses will be published on the NICE website once the final guideline is published.