CORU CPD for Optometrists and Dispensing Opticians: 30 Credits Explained

The Optical Registration Board is one of CORU's twelve registration boards, and it is unusual in covering two distinct professions on a single register: optometrists and dispensing opticians. Its register opened on 31 October 2015, which makes it one of the longer-established CORU boards — and means a registrant who joined at the opening has now been through more than a decade of CPD periods.

Two professions, one board

Registration with CORU operates under the Health and Social Care Professionals Act 2005, and the Optical Registration Board regulates both optometrists and dispensing opticians. At 31 December 2025 the register held 1,116 optometrists and 228 dispensing opticians. The CPD obligation does not differ between the two: it is set by the board's Code of Professional Conduct and Ethics and applies to every registrant.

That matters practically in a setting where both professions work side by side. A practice employing optometrists and dispensing opticians is managing one CPD standard across both roles, not two — which simplifies the policy and removes any argument that the dispensing side carries a lighter obligation.

The obligation: 30 credits in a rolling 12 months

CORU requires 30 CPD credits per rolling 12-month period, where one hour of CPD equals one credit. The period runs from your own registration renewal date, not the calendar year — a distinction that catches first-time registrants who assume a 31 December cut-off.

Two features of the CORU scheme are worth stating plainly because they differ from several other regulators. First, there is no carry-forward. Credits earned beyond 30 in one period do not roll into the next, so front-loading a busy year buys nothing. Second, there are no fixed categories and no prescribed split between types of activity. Registrants determine what is relevant to their own scope of practice, which places the burden of justification on the registrant rather than on a syllabus.

The obligation also applies to registrants who are not currently practising. Holding registration, rather than working, is what triggers it.

No approved provider list — and no CORU-approved course

This is the single most common misunderstanding, and it is worth being precise about: CORU has no role in developing, delivering or accrediting CPD activities. There is no CORU-approved provider list and no CORU-accredited course. Any training marketed as "CORU approved" is mis-described, whoever is selling it.

What follows is that the test is relevance and evidence, not provenance. A short in-practice session on a new diagnostic instrument, properly reflected on and recorded, counts; an expensive course with no bearing on your scope of practice does not become compliant because of who ran it. The same principle runs across every CORU board, as the allied health professions CPD requirements set out.

Where the requirement comes from

The CPD provision sits in the Framework Code of Professional Conduct and Ethics, which runs to 26 standards. Section 10 is the CPD standard, with its obligations at 10.1(a), 10.1(b), 10.2(a) and 10.2(b). Reading the standard rather than a summary of it is worth the ten minutes, because the wording is what an audit is assessed against — and the statutory basis for the whole structure is set out in the Health and Social Care Professionals Act 2005.

How audit works

CORU audits by random sample. It does not publish the percentage of registrants selected, and the outcome is binary — your submission either satisfies the standard or it does not. There is no partial credit and no grading scale.

Audits are scheduled board by board rather than across the whole register at once. Other boards have been through the process recently, and the November 2026 audit of dietitians, radiographers and speech and language therapists is a useful read on what a submission actually involves, because the mechanics are common across boards even when the schedule is not.

What a defensible record looks like

Four things, on the CORU model: a running total showing 30 credits inside your current 12-month period; a short statement for each activity explaining its relevance to your own scope of practice; evidence the activity happened, which can be as simple as an agenda, a certificate or a dated note; and a reflection on what changed in your practice as a result. The reflection is the part most registrants under-do and the part that distinguishes a record from a receipt.

Because there is no carry-forward and no provider list, the practical risk for optometrists and dispensing opticians is not finding enough CPD — it is reaching a renewal date with activity that was never written down. Keeping the record as you go, rather than reconstructing it, is the whole discipline. If you are new to the register, the CORU registration process sets out where the renewal date comes from, and what CORU is and does covers the regulator's wider remit. Structured CPD courses can make the credits easier to accumulate and evidence, but the judgement about relevance stays with you.