The one UK regulator that does accredit CPD providers

There is a rule of thumb about UK continuing professional development that is almost always true and occasionally expensive: UK regulators do not accredit CPD providers. They set an outcomes-based requirement and leave it to the registrant to judge what is relevant. The General Optical Council is the exception, and it is not a marginal one.

What the other regulators say

It is worth establishing the general rule first, because the GOC only looks unusual against it. The HCPC states the position about as plainly as a regulator can: "we do not 'approve' or 'endorse' any CPD activities", and on third-party schemes specifically, "As we do not approve any CPD schemes", you "still need to make sure that you are content that taking part in a scheme will allow you to meet our standards." Its guidance is at hcpc-uk.org.

The General Dental Council is equally direct: "The GDC does not approve any providers of CPD activity." What the GDC regulates instead is the paperwork — the certificate must carry the subject, aims and objectives, the anticipated GDC development outcomes, the dates, the hours, the professional's name, and "Confirmation from the provider that the information contained in it is full and accurate." So the GDC governs the certificate, not the provider.

The NMC says it does not prescribe any particular type of CPD. The SRA sets no minimum. The Bar Standards Board removed accredited hours altogether: "There is no longer a requirement to complete accredited hours."

The GOC runs an actual provider scheme

Against that backdrop, the GOC operates a registration scheme for CPD providers with the features you would expect of a regulatory approval process rather than a commercial badge. Its provider guidance is published at optical.org.

• Anyone can apply, for a fee. Eligibility extends to any individual or organisation with a role in developing and delivering CPD to GOC registrants. The annual provider fee is £45, payable on application and each year after.
• Two tiers of status. A provider on provisional status can deliver immediately, but its first ten sessions need advance GOC approval. Full status, available after at least ten approved sessions, allows a provider to plan, develop and deliver content without per-session approval.
• No retrospective approval. The guidance is explicit: "You cannot obtain retrospective approval for events already held." An unapproved event cannot be fixed afterwards.
• Four published provider standards covering patient safety and professionalism, safe and accessible learning, developing and delivering CPD content, and delivering value for students, patients and employers.
• Providers are audited. "Up to ten percent of CPD providers will be audited each calendar year", with outcomes of passed, requires improvement, or serious concerns. Under targeted audit a failure "will result in an automatic removal of your approved provider status." Auditors cannot retrospectively strip points from registrants who already attended.

Why this is load-bearing, not cosmetic

The part that matters commercially is that GOC registrants are required to source a proportion of their CPD from registered providers. Registrants must obtain a minimum of 36 points across the four domains, and at least 18 of those must come from GOC CPD providers. Learning from anywhere else is classified as self-directed CPD — defined as learning from sources other than GOC CPD providers — and carries 0.5 points for 30 to 60 minutes, 1 point for an hour or more, or 3 points for registrant-led peer review. Registered providers' sessions are explicitly worth more points, and no single session can exceed three points.

Registrants in the specialties carry more: those on the additional supply, supplementary prescribing and independent prescribing specialty registers need 54 points rather than 36.

So for an optometrist or dispensing optician, "approved provider" is a regulatory fact with a points consequence attached. For a physiotherapist or a dentist, the same phrase on a course brochure is a claim made by a private assessor and carries no regulatory standing at all. Those two situations look identical in marketing copy and are completely different in substance.

What an employer should take from this

Three practical consequences. First, if you buy training for optical staff, provider status is a procurement criterion, not a nice-to-have — check it before booking, and check it is current rather than historic, since status can be removed. Second, if you buy training for any other UK healthcare or legal profession, provider accreditation tells you something about the course's quality assurance and nothing about whether your regulator will accept it; that question is answered by whether the learning is relevant to the registrant's scope of practice. Third, do not generalise in either direction. "No UK regulator accredits CPD providers" is wrong, and so is assuming your regulator works like the GOC.

The GOC's provider audit is also the only one of its kind here — no other UK regulator in this group audits the providers as well as the registrants.

For what regulators do with registrants' own records, see our comparison of how long CPD evidence must be kept and our guide to preparing for an HCPC CPD audit. For a market where prior provider approval is the norm rather than the exception, see the CNE and CME provider approval gate in India.