Bar Standards Board CPD Requirements for Barristers

Continuing professional development for barristers in England and Wales works differently depending on how long you've been in practice. The Bar Standards Board runs a defined hours regime for new practitioners, then shifts to an outcomes-based approach for everyone else — a structure that's easy to misunderstand if you're used to a single fixed annual requirement. Here's how it actually works, and what it means for how chambers and individual barristers plan their CPD.

The New Practitioner Programme: 45 hours over three years

Barristers fall under the BSB's New Practitioner Programme (NPP) for the first three calendar years in which they hold a practising certificate after pupillage. The period starts on 1 January of the calendar year after you first started practising, so a barrister who started practising on 2 January 2024 begins on 1 January 2025 and must complete the NPP by 31 December 2027. Rather than an annual target, the requirement is set across the full three-year period: 45 hours of CPD in total. Within that 45 hours, at least 9 hours must be advocacy training and at least 3 hours must be ethics training.

The advocacy training requirement is worth pausing on because it's often treated too casually. The Inns of Court and the Circuits provide the advocacy and ethics courses for barristers on the programme, and you do not have to train at your own Inn or Circuit. Check with the provider that a course counts as advocacy training before relying on it, because the BSB does not prescribe other CPD activities. Chambers building CPD plans for their new tenants should build in advocacy training specifically, not assume that a broad CPD subscription covers it by default.

The 3 hours of ethics training within the 45-hour total should be genuinely about ethics, such as client confidentiality, duties to the court and conflicts of interest, not a tangential compliance module that happens to touch on professional standards.

New practitioners also declare whether they are up to date with the requirements of the NPP as part of Authorisation to Practise, and may be asked to produce a written CPD plan and record if the BSB asks, for example in a spot check.

After the New Practitioner stage: outcomes-based CPD

Once a barrister passes the three-year New Practitioner mark, the BSB's approach changes fundamentally. There's no further fixed annual hours target. Instead, established barristers follow an outcomes-based process built around three steps: planning their CPD for the year ahead based on their practice and any gaps in it, undertaking that CPD, and then reviewing what they did and what it achieved.

This mirrors the direction the SRA has taken with continuing competence for solicitors — both regulators have moved away from counting hours as a proxy for competence, and towards asking practitioners to demonstrate that their learning is actually relevant to their practice. For barristers, that means the plan-undertake-review cycle needs to produce something a barrister could point to if asked: what they identified as a development need, what they did about it, and what changed as a result.

This is the BSB's Established Practitioners Programme (EPP). Each calendar year, barristers must prepare a written CPD plan with learning objectives, keep a written record of the CPD they undertake, and write a reflection on it, including any variations from the plan and their future learning objectives. The plan and records must be kept for three years, and barristers submit an annual declaration of completion of CPD as part of Authorisation to Practise. The BSB does not prescribe hours or activities for the EPP and has no extension or waiver process, so if parental leave or ill health means you do less CPD, record that in your plan.

Why the distinction matters for chambers

Chambers administering CPD across a full membership need to run what amount to two different systems in parallel. New practitioners need hours tracked against the 45-hour, three-year target, with the advocacy and ethics minimums flagged separately so nobody reaches year three short on either. Established members need support for planning and reviewing their own CPD rather than hour-counting — which in practice often means providing a simple framework or template rather than a hard number to hit, plus access to genuinely relevant content across practice areas.

Getting this wrong in either direction causes problems. Treating new practitioners as if they're on the outcomes-based system risks under-delivering the advocacy and ethics hours the BSB specifically requires. Treating established barristers as if they still have an hours target undersells what the outcomes-based approach is actually asking for — genuine reflection and evidence of relevance, not a number.

Practical steps for barristers and chambers

For a new practitioner, the simplest approach is to map the 45-hour target against the three calendar years from day one, ring-fencing the 9 advocacy hours and 3 ethics hours early rather than leaving them to be found later, and confirming that any advocacy training booked is delivered by a properly qualified trainer rather than a self-paced substitute. For established barristers, building a habit of writing a short annual CPD plan — a handful of specific development areas tied to actual practice, revisited and reviewed at year end — satisfies the outcomes-based process far better than an ad hoc list of courses attended. This also connects naturally to broader professional ethics obligations, since a genuine reflection on practice tends to surface both technical and ethical development needs together.

How many CPD hours does a new barrister need to complete?

New practitioners must complete 45 hours of CPD across their first three calendar years of practice, including at least 9 hours of advocacy training and at least 3 hours of ethics training.

Do established barristers still need to log a fixed number of CPD hours?

No. Once past the New Practitioner Programme, barristers follow an outcomes-based process of planning, undertaking and reviewing their CPD, with no fixed annual hours target set by the BSB.

Can advocacy training be completed through a self-paced online module?

The BSB's guidance does not say how advocacy training must be delivered, only that the Inns of Court and the Circuits provide the courses. Chambers should confirm with the provider that a course counts as advocacy training before counting it towards the 9 hours.

What counts as ethics training for the New Practitioner Programme?

Ethics training within the 45-hour requirement should be genuinely about ethics, such as confidentiality, duties to the court and conflicts of interest, rather than general compliance material that only touches on ethics incidentally.

The shift from a fixed three-year target to an outcomes-based process marks a real change in what the BSB expects — from counting hours to demonstrating relevance. Barristers and chambers that build habits around genuine planning and review, rather than hour-logging, will find the transition out of the New Practitioner Programme far less of a jolt.

What the rules actually require you to produce

The Established Practitioners Programme is often described as having no requirements. It has no hours requirement. It has four documentary obligations, and they are set out in the BSB Handbook rather than left to professional judgement.

• A written CPD Plan recording your learning objectives for the calendar year and the types of CPD activity you intend to undertake (rQ134.1).
• A written record of the CPD you actually completed during the year (rQ134.2).
• A reflection, recorded in the Plan, on the CPD undertaken, on any variation from what you had planned, and on your learning objectives going forward (rQ134.3).
• Retention and declaration — the Plan and records must be kept for three years (rQ134.4), and an annual declaration of completion submitted to the BSB (rQ134.5).

Read together, those four points describe a cycle rather than a filing exercise: plan, do, record, reflect, and let the reflection shape next year's plan. A barrister who completes substantial CPD but keeps no Plan and files no reflection has not met the requirement, however much learning took place. Conversely, a thin year that is honestly planned, recorded and reflected on is compliant.

Who sits in which programme

The New Practitioners Programme applies to barristers in their first three calendar years holding a practising certificate after any pupillage year, and the 45 hours — including the nine advocacy hours and three ethics hours — must be completed across that period rather than in each year of it. NPP activities no longer need to be separately accredited, which widens what chambers can deliver in-house.

Barristers who have completed the New Practitioners Programme move to the Established Practitioners Programme and stay there. There is no later stage and no return to an hours count.

Three regulators, three different answers

A chambers or firm with mixed professional populations is managing three regimes at once, and they do not align.

• The BSB sets hours only for new practitioners, then switches to planning, recording and reflection with no hours at all.
• The SRA has no hours requirement for solicitors at any career stage, asking instead for an annual reflection on competence against its Statement of Solicitor Competence — covered in our guide to SRA continuing competence.
• The Law Society of Ireland runs the most prescriptive of the three: a 25-hour annual minimum with mandatory categories, a group study floor and format caps, set out in our guide to the Irish 25-hour CPD cycle.

The practical consequence is that a single training programme cannot be built to one standard and declared compliant everywhere. An outcomes-based regulator wants to see why you chose a session and what changed as a result; an hours-based one wants the hours in the right categories, in the right formats, inside the calendar year.

Related CPD guides

• Legal ethics CPD for solicitors and barristers
• Advocacy fundamentals: a practical guide
• Legal CPD in Ireland and the UK: the complete guide
• Professional ethics, conflicts and client care

This article is general information, not professional or regulatory advice. The Bar Standards Board updates its CPD requirements from time to time, so check the current position on the BSB website before planning your own CPD or your chambers' training.