CORU CPD for Occupational Therapists: 30 Credits, Four Reflections and an Indefinite Record

Occupational therapy is one of the larger professions on CORU’s register, with 3,900 registrants recorded in the regulator’s State of the Register for the first half of 2025. Every one of them is subject to a mandatory, auditable CPD standard — and the requirement contains several specific obligations that are easy to miss, including one that causes an otherwise diligent portfolio to fail outright.

Thirty credits, every twelve months, with nothing carried forward

The Continuing Professional Development Standard and Requirements for Occupational Therapists sets the headline figure: registrants must complete 30 CPD credits in each 12-month period (Sections 2.6 and 3.3). Generally one hour of learning equals one credit.

Surplus credits cannot be carried into the next period (Section 3.3). A strong year does not bank anything for a difficult one, which makes the requirement a genuine annual floor rather than an average over time.

Worth noting for anyone reading the structure closely: this is a Council framework rather than a document issued by the Occupational Therapists Registration Board itself, which is why its language speaks to registrants across the health and social care professions while applying to occupational therapists specifically.

The requirement that fails portfolios: range

There are no credit quotas by category. Appendix 1 groups activities as structured — formal, professional or work-based — and unstructured, meaning informal or self-directed learning. On the face of it, that looks permissive.

It is not. Section 2.6 requires registrants to complete a range of CPD activities rather than relying on a single type, and Section 3.2 gives a worked example of a record containing only one activity type failing the requirement. Thirty credits of online modules, or thirty credits of conference attendance, does not satisfy the standard even though the arithmetic works.

This is the single most common way a registrant who has done the hours still falls short. The fix is deliberate variety planned at the start of the period, not assembled in the last fortnight.

The four-credit portfolio cap

Maintaining the CPD portfolio itself earns a maximum of 4 credits per 12-month period (Section 3.3). It is the only cap stated in the framework.

The intent is clear enough: administering your own record is recognised as real work, but it cannot substitute for learning. Four credits is the ceiling, so at least 26 of the 30 must come from activity that develops practice.

What the portfolio must actually contain

The portfolio has five required elements (Sections 2.6, 3.4, 4.1 and 4.4):

1. Professional role and practice setting
2. Personal learning plan
3. Record of CPD activities
4. Reflections
5. Evidence of CPD activities

Two specifics carry more weight than their brevity suggests. Reflections must cover four different activities (Sections 2.6 and 3.2) — a defined number, not a general expectation of reflectiveness. And records must be kept indefinitely (Section 3.4). There is no retention period after which a portfolio can be discarded.

Confidentiality cuts across all of it: service user details and other confidential information must be removed from the portfolio (Section 4.4). A reflection that identifies a client is a data protection problem sitting inside a regulatory record.

Audit, and who can trigger scrutiny

On request from the registration board, registrants must submit their portfolio for periodic compliance audits. The portfolio must be the registrant’s own work and supported by evidence (Section 2.6, item 5).

The consequences of non-compliance are more serious than administrative. A registration board that finds non-compliance can complain to the Council on grounds of professional misconduct (Sections 1.2, 2.3). A false declaration of CPD activity may be treated as professional misconduct, and so may plagiarism within a portfolio (Sections 4.5, 4.6).

And the route to scrutiny is not only the regulator’s. Anyone — including employers and members of the public — can complain to the Council about a registrant’s failure to meet the CPD standard. That makes the portfolio a document with external exposure rather than a private professional file.

The audit date for occupational therapists is 1 April 2027, against an audit period running from 1 April 2025 to 31 March 2027. Because that is a 24-month window, the requirement is 30 credits in each of the two 12-month periods within it — not 60 credits across the two years. Only activities undertaken inside the period count, and only registrants on the register for the whole period are eligible for selection. Selection is random, and selected registrants submit through the CORU Registrant Portal, which asks for the learning activities, evaluation and reflection, a review of learning needs and planned learning for the next 12 months. The full schedule for all ten boards is in our guide to the CORU CPD audit on 1 November 2026.

Where CPD sits in the Standards of Proficiency

The CPD framework does not stand alone. The Standards of Proficiency for Occupational Therapists build the same expectations into what it means to be proficient in the first place.

Domain 4, Criterion 1 requires graduates to understand the role of continuing professional development and demonstrate commitment to lifelong learning (indicator j), to take responsibility for personal and professional development (indicator f), and to maintain a record of and critically review a personal development plan (indicator g). The same criterion requires an understanding of the importance of self-awareness and self-reflection (indicator a), the ability to reflect critically on personal practice in order to improve it (indicator b), and an understanding of the role, purpose and function of supervision (indicator d).

Domain 1 adds the competence dimension: Standard 8 requires an understanding of the importance of keeping knowledge, skills, attitudes and proficiencies up to date over a lifetime of practice (indicator c) and of practising safely and effectively within scope of practice (indicator a), while Standard 6 requires registrants to know the limits of their practice and when to seek advice or refer to another professional (indicator a).

Read together with the CPD framework, the regulatory position is coherent: the personal learning plan in the portfolio is the mechanism by which a registrant evidences the lifelong-learning standard, and the reflections are the mechanism by which they evidence critical self-review.

One thing CORU does not do

CORU does not accredit CPD providers. There is no approved-provider list to check and no CORU-endorsed badge to look for. The registrant, not the provider, is responsible for whether an activity is appropriate, relevant to their practice, and defensible in an audit.

That is liberating and risky in equal measure. It means any good-quality learning can count. It also means a certificate from a confident-looking provider carries no regulatory weight on its own — the registrant has to be able to explain the link to their own practice and development plan.

How this compares

The structure will look familiar to anyone who has worked under the UK system, but the mechanics differ. Occupational therapists registered with the HCPC in the United Kingdom work to a different model, set out in our guide to HCPC CPD requirements for occupational therapists — so a therapist moving between jurisdictions cannot assume one portfolio satisfies both.

Within CORU, the 30-credit model applies across the open registers, though board-level documents and audit timing differ. We have covered the equivalent position for social workers and for medical scientists, and the general framework across all professions in our guide to CORU CPD requirements for allied health professionals.

If you are new to the register or still working through it, our step-by-step guide to registering with CORU and our explainer on what CORU is and what it regulates cover the surrounding ground.

A five-point check

Does your record contain more than one type of activity, structured and unstructured? Do you have reflections on four different activities, not one summary reflection? Are you relying on more than 4 credits of portfolio maintenance? Is any service user identifiable anywhere in the portfolio? And are you keeping the record indefinitely, rather than clearing it down each year?

Thirty credits is the part everyone knows. The four reflections, the range requirement and the indefinite retention are the parts that decide an audit.