A doctor who ran an unlicensed transgender clinic which gave sex-change hormones to children as young as 12 is to move her online service to Spain to continue operating.
Helen Webberley, of Abergavenny, was fined £12,000 in December 2018 after being found guilty of illegally providing healthcare services from her home under the firm Online GP Services Ltd.
It was found that between March 2017 and February 2018, the firm had operated without a licence after it was refused by watchdog Healthcare Inspectorate Wales.
During that time, Dr Webberley gave hormones to children as young as 12 after being denied treatment on the NHS, and offered advice online to patients looking to undergo gender reassignment.
But the doctor, who was given an interim suspension by the General Medical Council in November 2018, is to move online clinic GenderGP run by her and her husband Mike Webberley to Malaga to allow their 1600 patients to continue to receive treatment.
In a statement shared on the GenderGP website, Dr Webberley said: "Mike and I are unable to prescribe any more but we have taken safe and secure steps to make sure that nobody is without care while we wait for the NHS to step up to the mark.
"We have moved the management hub of GenderGP and the medical care outside of the UK until it is safe to bring it back.
"Our European doctors have been specially trained to advise and prescribe for you, once you have undergone the GenderGP appraisal pathway that has become so popular and well-respected.
"This means that your medication will continue, nobody will come to harm."
Under the move both Mike and Helen Webberley will continue to work at GenderGP in a "non-medical advocacy role".
The service offers to "hook" patients up with confidential advice, support and treatment to "everyone, regardless of your financial status, age, gender or medical needs", and is described as unavailable elsewhere in the UK.
The news comes after Mike Webberley was also given an interim suspension from practicing on Friday after a Medical Practitioners Tribunal.
The firm said the tribunal followed a report into Dr Webberley's actions commissioned by the GMC to provide an "expert opinion on the care given to three younger trans patients".
But GenderGP have said the decision made will leave 1600 patients at risk of "sudden withdrawal of treatment" and accused authorities of "institutional transphobia".
They said: "Despite knowing that he was the sole provider of care for 1600 transgender patients, the GMC has today suspended Dr Mike Webberley MBChB FRCP MD, whose work with the trans and non-binary community has provided life saving interim care, something that is unavailable anywhere else in the UK.
"The three patients in question were all young people. One was a trans boy who was finding the onset of female puberty and chest development distressing, in whom Dr Webberley commenced puberty blockers in line with current UK guidance.
"The second was a young trans boy who was prescribed puberty blockers by Dr Helen Webberley at the onset of puberty, and Dr Mike Webberley took over his care when Dr Helen Webberley was temporarily suspended in May 2017.
"The third was a patient who was suffering from gender dysphoria and was being prescribed a large number of psychiatric medicines to keep his mental distress at bay.
"He was denied access to gender care on the NHS, so reached out to Dr Webberley for support. Having reviewed the case, Dr Webberley prescribed gender-affirming hormones. These were then subsequently confiscated by his psychiatric nurse. She complained to the GMC that gender hormones would be harmful.
"All three patients and their parents have been more than happy with the care that they received, which is in line with best practice laid out in the Endocrine Society Guidelines, endorsed by the WPATH and adopted by leading gender clinics in the US and Australia."
