HCPC CPD audit outcomes: what happens to the 2.5 per cent selected

Most writing about CPD audit deals in the abstract: you might be selected, so keep good records. The HCPC is one of the few regulators anywhere that publishes enough to replace that with arithmetic. It audits a fixed percentage, it publishes the sample size by profession and cycle, and it publishes the outcomes. The numbers are reassuring in one direction and sobering in another.

The selection rule

At the start of each renewal window the HCPC randomly selects 2.5 per cent of each profession and asks those registrants to submit a CPD profile. Selection is computer-generated. Registrants who have been on the Register for less than two years are not eligible, so new graduates and returners are not caught at their first renewal, and being selected once does not exclude you from being selected again. The HCPC's own summary is that "The majority of the professionals on our Register pass their audit when selected." Its audit pages are at hcpc-uk.org.

Because the rate is a percentage of each profession separately, the absolute number varies enormously. In the 2021 to 2023 cycle the samples ran from 23 prosthetists and orthotists and 30 orthoptists up to 653 paramedics and 832 occupational therapists, with clinical scientists at 143 and speech and language therapists at 341. In the preceding cycle physiotherapists had the largest sample at 1,324, with radiographers at 777, operating department practitioners at 336, chiropodists and podiatrists at 287, dietitians at 232, arts therapists at 104 and hearing aid dispensers at 73. Biomedical scientists were audited at 506.

What happens to those who are audited

The published paramedic figures for 2023 are the clearest single illustration, covering all 653 registrants asked to present a profile. The report is at hcpc-uk.org.

• Accepted, having met the CPD standards: 525, or 80.4 per cent
• Deferred: 81, or 12.4 per cent
• Did not renew: 20, or 3.1 per cent
• Voluntary deregistration: 20, or 3.1 per cent
• Removed for not meeting the CPD standards: 4, or 0.6 per cent
• Still awaiting an outcome at the time of reporting: 3

The historic aggregate tells the same story at scale. Across audits from June 2015 to March 2017, 8,599 registrants were audited: 6,774 accepted (78.8 per cent), 1,012 deferred (11.8 per cent), 484 voluntarily deregistered (5.6 per cent), 267 did not renew (3.1 per cent) and 55 were removed — 0.63 per cent. There were 12 appeals across the period.

Reading the numbers honestly

Two conclusions are available and they pull in opposite directions, which is why single-figure summaries of this data mislead.

Removal is rare. Under one per cent of audited registrants are removed for failing to meet the CPD standards, in both the recent per-profession figures and the 8,599-registrant aggregate. Combined with a 2.5 per cent selection rate, the probability that any given registrant is removed in a cycle for a CPD failure is very small. Anyone selling CPD on the implied threat of deregistration is overstating the risk considerably.

Roughly one in five audited registrants does not simply pass. Acceptance runs around 78 to 80 per cent, which means about a fifth of those selected are deferred, deregister, or do not renew. Deferral is the largest of those categories and it is the one most within a registrant's control: it means the profile as submitted did not demonstrate the standards and more is needed. That is an administrative burden and a deadline, landing on someone who was probably doing adequate CPD and documenting it poorly.

Profession matters too. Social workers in England audited in September 2016 showed 1,767 of 2,365 accepted, 74.8 per cent, with 33 removed — 1.4 per cent, more than double the overall rate. Physiotherapists in February 2016 ran at 79.9 per cent accepted with 6 removed from 1,285, and paramedics in June 2015 at 85.2 per cent accepted with none removed from 532.

What this means in practice

The useful inference is not about the odds of selection, which are low and which you cannot influence. It is that the failure mode is documentation rather than activity. A registrant who is doing relevant learning and recording it thinly is in the deferral population, not the removal population, and the fix is a written reflective record linking activity to scope of practice.

For employers, the planning implication is a timing one. Deferral creates a short-deadline evidence request landing on an individual with no warning, which is far easier to absorb if records are maintained continuously than reconstructed. The HCPC also assesses relevance at audit through trained assessors, at least one from the registrant's own profession — so the registrant chooses the CPD, but the regulator judges it if they are selected.

One caveat on citing these figures: the biomedical scientist report carries slightly different acceptance percentages in two of its tables, around 78 per cent either way, and its cycle dates are inconsistent between the link and the page text. Cite that one as approximate.

For what to submit if you are selected, see our guide to preparing for an HCPC CPD audit and the profession-specific detail for prosthetists and orthotists. For the one UK regulator that audits providers as well as registrants, see the GOC provider registration scheme.