A psychotherapist accused of encouraging his patients to take illegal drugs and join nude workshops is continuing to practise despite being suspended by the official regulators.

Derek Gale is able to carry on charging up to £75 an hour for “couples therapy” to help with relationship and sexual problems because of a loophole in the regulations governing the profession. Critics say that the failure to prevent Mr Gale practising highlights the lax control of the country’s estimated 100,000 psychotherapists and therapists who operate without any legal regulation.

The Health Professions Council has taken the unusual step of suspending Mr Gale before a full hearing after it ruled that there was a “significant potential risk of harm to clients”. Mr Gale is the first arts therapist to be suspended from the council’s register. But the council regulates only “art therapists” who offer “music, art or drama therapy”, leaving Mr Gale free to work as long as he does not use these titles to describe his services.

A council spokeswoman said: “There is an annoying legal loophole. If you don’t advertise the art therapy disciplines, you can get off scot-free.”

The disciplinary panel was told that the allegations centred on “inappropriate relationships with clients” and that Mr Gale “encouraged patients to break the law” and “exploited his relationships with clients”.

Mr Gale offers “couple therapy”, executive coaching, and help for people suffering from eating disorders, sexual problems and panic attacks. He has clinics in Loughton, Essex, and Central London.

One client claimed that Mr Gale used therapy sessions to “unduly influence” him to make a £5,000 donation. Guy Smith, a property developer, said that he changed his will so that the psychotherapist was appointed as executor and trustee of his estate. Mr Smith, 39, from Loughton, said in a letter to the hearing that Mr Gale had told him the donation would “help me with my lack of generosity”. He also claimed that Mr Gale sexually assaulted him by “playfully groping my crotch during the workshops and on one occasion attempting to kiss me”.

Mr Smith told The Times after the hearing: “Over six years of therapy with Mr Gale I spent about £40,000, the average being £7,000 per annum. If I and my wife had died in a car crash, Mr Gale would have stood to have got £325,000 after taxes from our wills.”

Paula Conlon, 38, an IT consultant, from Ilford, said that she had become a client in 2000 because of relationship problems and over the next five years was persuaded to attend one-on-one sessions, group therapy and residential psychodrama workshops. She wrote to the disciplinary hearing: “In hindsight I realise that Derek Gale’s practice and therapies were of no value to me whatsoever and indeed have deliberately caused extensive emotional trauma.”

Ian Johnson, 44, wrote in a letter read to the hearing: “There was a phase in 2004 where Mr Gale was encouraging all of his clients to experiment with drugs, particularly cannabis. The smoking of the drug became a regular occurrence at his parties.”

An unnamed client said that he had seen Mr Gale naked while on holiday with him and in a “nude group”. “I did not want to do the nude group and voiced this but I feel I was persuaded to go ahead with the idea by a strong sense in the group, led by Mr Gale, that I lacked courage and needed to face my fear,” he wrote.

A representative for Mr Gale told the hearing that the evidence against him was “highly questionable” and amounted to a vendetta. He produced references from three current clients and from other professionals.

The panel granted the interim order, which suspends his registration for 18 months, pending an investigation and a full hearing. Mr Gale, 58, refused to comment except to say: “It is being investigated by the professional body and you cannot expect me to comment further.”

On his website he has written: “I found taking all my cloths [sic] off in front of a not unattractive woman and engaging in a quite painful form of deep tissue massage incredibly helpful on a deep therapeutic level.” Of his charges, he wrote: “I think people should pay what therapy is worth and not get it on the cheap, and if they can afford to pay more they should.”

The Department of Health said that a law regulating all psychotherapists was unlikely to be introduced before 2009 because “time is needed to establish competencies and training”.

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