Continuing professional development

Continuing professional development (CPD) means the learning you do after qualifying to keep your skills current. In the public sector it comes in two forms. For registered professionals such as nurses, midwives, paramedics and physiotherapists, a set amount of recorded CPD is a condition of staying on the register. For everyone else, including teachers, support staff and most administrative roles, CPD is set by the employer and tied to appraisal and pay progression rather than to a licence to practise.

CPD that your registration depends on

Several regulators make CPD a legal condition of practising.

Nurses, midwives and nursing associates revalidate with the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) every three years. Revalidation includes a set number of CPD hours, part of which must be participatory learning with other people, along with practice hours, feedback, reflective accounts and a confirmation by a manager or other suitable person. NMC revalidation covers each requirement.

Allied health professionals, biomedical scientists, paramedics and other professions regulated by the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC) must meet its CPD standards and keep a record. At each renewal you declare that you have met them, and a sample of registrants is selected for audit and asked to send in a profile showing their learning. HCPC registration explains renewal and audit.

Doctors go through annual appraisal and revalidation with the General Medical Council, and social workers in England renew with Social Work England each year by recording CPD online. Pharmacists, pharmacy technicians and dental professionals have their own regulators’ rules.

What counts is broad. Courses and study days count, but so do reflective discussions after a difficult case, shadowing, teaching students, audit and quality improvement projects, reading guidance and journals, and e-learning. The regulators care less about the format than whether the learning is relevant to your practice and recorded with what you took from it.

Teachers

Teachers in England have no licence to renew. Instead, CPD runs through the school. Full-time teachers in maintained schools work 195 days, of which 190 are teaching days; the other five are usually used for in-service training (INSET). Some of your directed time across the year (1,265 hours for full-time classroom teachers) is also used for staff meetings and training.

The Department for Education’s standard for teachers’ professional development sets out what good CPD looks like: focused on pupil outcomes, grounded in evidence, sustained over time and supported by school leaders. It is guidance, not a legal duty.

For teachers who want formal qualifications, the main options are the national professional qualifications, master’s degrees, and subject-specific programmes from subject associations. New teachers get a structured two years of training through early career teacher induction.

NHS staff on Agenda for Change

For NHS staff on Agenda for Change, CPD is part of the annual appraisal. Your manager agrees a personal development plan with you, and you need to have completed your mandatory and statutory training to move to the next pay step. NHS Employers’ guidance on pay progression sets out the conditions: an appraisal in the past year, mandatory training up to date, and no formal capability or disciplinary action in place.

Many trusts give study leave, sometimes paid, for training linked to your role. Funding for courses varies a great deal between trusts and departments. Larger qualifications, such as a master’s or advanced clinical practice training, often depend on the service needing the skill and on central funding being available that year. If you want to move up bands, CPD is usually how you build the evidence for the next role; career progression in the NHS shows how that tends to work.

Councils and the Civil Service

Local government staff on Green Book conditions usually have an annual appraisal with development objectives, but there is no national CPD requirement. Professional staff in councils, such as planners, accountants, environmental health officers and building control surveyors, follow the CPD rules of their own professional bodies, which may be a condition of membership or chartered status.

The Civil Service runs its own learning framework, with online courses, profession-based training and leadership programmes. Departments set expectations for development time, and your line manager is the person to agree it with. Many civil servants also belong to professions, such as policy, finance or digital, with their own development standards.

Recording your CPD

Whatever your job, keep a running record: the date, what you did, how long it took, what you learned and how it changed your practice. A spreadsheet or a simple document is enough. Regulators that audit ask for exactly this, and a record built up through the year is far easier than reconstructing three years of learning the month before your deadline.

Keep evidence such as certificates and attendance confirmations, but remove patient or pupil details from anything you store. If you change employer, take your record with you; it belongs to you.

Costs and tax relief

If you pay a fee to a professional body that is on HMRC’s approved list, such as the NMC or HCPC, you can claim tax relief on it. The same applies to the professional element of some union and membership subscriptions. You claim through HMRC, and earlier tax years can be included within HMRC’s time limits. Tax relief on professional fees explains the process. Course fees you pay yourself are a separate matter and usually do not qualify; check with HMRC before claiming.