A GP who ran an unauthorised online transgender clinic treating young people has been suspended from practising for two months by a fitness to practise tribunal, weeks after her husband was struck off from being a doctor.

Dr Helen Webberley from Abergavenny was told it was “the shortest practical period” to prepare for “a review hearing” to consider her reinstatement.

The GP, who ran the GenderGP service with her consultant gastroenterologist husband Dr Michael Webberley, described the findings and decision of the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service (MPTS) panel as “a pretty massive win!” after a majority of the General Medical Council’s 119 charges were dismissed.

A fresh hearing in two months will need to see that she has the proper insight into her “failure” to provide proper follow-up care to two young patients, the panel said.

It comes after her husband was struck off in May after the MPTS ruled he had failed to provide good clinical care to 24 patients and put patients at risk of serious harm.

Dr Helen Webberley advocates puberty blocker therapy for children wanting to change their gender and ran a clinic from her home supplying hormonal treatment.

She was suspended from practicing in the UK in 2019 pending an inquiry and the subsequent MPTS hearing, after being fined £12,000 at Merthyr Tydfil magistrates court for running an unlicensed practice which treated 1,600 transgender patients and “gender dysphoric” children.

Sitting in Manchester at several hearings over the last 12 months, the MPTS found she had committed serious misconduct by not providing proper follow-up care to two patients, aged 12 and 17, who were prescribed testosterone, and failed an 11-year-old patient by omitting to discuss risks to fertility before prescribing puberty blockers.

However, it also ruled that she was competent to provide child transgender treatment.

Suspending Dr Webberley for two months at the latest hearing, panel chairman Angus Macpherson said: “The period of suspension which the tribunal considers it should impose is that period which allows Dr Webberley the opportunity to demonstrate her level of insight into this aspect of the tribunal’s finding of impairment…

“The tribunal considered that this period will allow Dr Webberley sufficient time to demonstrate whether she has the necessary insight into the concerns identified by this tribunal and that she has remediated her shortcomings.

“It is also the shortest practical period to make arrangements for a review hearing to take place.”

The panel found her fitness to practise impaired due to her court conviction, her misconduct and on wider public interest grounds.

It said the failure to provide adequate follow-up care put two patients, transitioning from female to male, at “unwarranted risk of harm”.

“In the tribunal’s view an informed member of the public would be surprised if a finding of impairment on public interest grounds were not made in those circumstances,” it said.

“It therefore finds that Dr Webberley’s fitness to practise is impaired on wider public interest grounds.”

After being suspended from practising, she and her husband moved their online Gender GP clinic, which is now owned by an LGBT group based in Hong Kong, to Spain.

Doctors registered in Spain can prescribe sex change drugs to UK children which have previously been blocked here.

Mr Macpherson said at an interim finding of facts hearing in April that the GP had been “at the vanguard” of transgender healthcare at a time of “immense pressure” on the NHS England Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS), when some service users were “left in a state of desperation” and turned to her as an alternative, which was “hardly surprising”.

The panel found that: “Dr Webberley was at the material time a GP with a special interest in gender dysphoria and she was competent in the roles of mental health professional and hormone prescriber.”

After the latest hearing on June 30, Dr Webberley posted a 13-page list of the GMC’s charges against her on her @MyWebDoctorUk Twitter page, and said: “To be fair, when you look at the huge list of allegations they tried to get me with, just one that warranted any action on my registration is a pretty massive win!”

She also posted a picture of her and her husband on July 2, saying: “Just a quick thank you to all who have supported us through this living nightmare.

“It has been a pleasure to be part of this fight for better healthcare for trans people and our fight is not over yet.”

In May, a separate MPTS panel struck off former Nevill Hall consultant acute physician Dr Michael Webberley after 34 years working for the NHS.

It ruled he had wrongly prescribed sex-change treatments to seven transgender patients via GenderGP, one who was aged just nine.

It found a ‘catalogue of failings’ over the care given to patients between February 2017 and June 2019, including care provided after restrictions had been placed on his wife’s practice.

The panel said he had provided treatment that wasn’t clinically indicated or had been prescribed without adequate tests, examinations or assessments.

The tribunal also found he had acted ‘outside the limits of his expertise’ as a gastroenterologist.

His social media says he is retired.