Orthoptist CPD and the HCPC Audit

Orthoptists have the lowest first-time acceptance rate and the highest deferral rate of the HCPC professions with published audit figures. In the 2021 to 2023 cycle, 73.3 per cent of audited orthoptists had their profile accepted, and 23.3 per cent asked to defer — nearly one in four.

Before reading too much into that, one caveat that matters: the cohort was 30 people. At that size a single outcome moves the percentage by more than three points, so these figures describe what happened to thirty orthoptists rather than establishing that the profession is worse at CPD than any other. Treat them as a prompt, not a verdict.

The figures

Nobody was removed. Nobody left voluntarily. What happened is that seven of thirty selected orthoptists could not submit when asked and requested a postponement, which the HCPC granted on the basis of unavoidable circumstances.

Deferral is a legitimate route and it is not a black mark. But it is a postponement of the same task, not a release from it, and a quarter of a sample needing one points at the gap between the first standard and the fifth. The first requires a continuous record. The fifth only asks you to produce a profile when requested. Treat the fifth as the real obligation and you end up writing two years of CPD inside a three-month window while working.

What the HCPC requires

No hours. The HCPC states that it does not set a number of hours or points you have to complete and does not approve or endorse any CPD activities.

Five standards instead. Registrants must maintain a continuous, up-to-date and accurate record of their CPD; demonstrate that their activities are a mixture of learning relevant to current or future practice; seek to ensure the CPD has contributed to the quality of their practice and service delivery; seek to ensure it benefits the service user; and, on request, present a written profile that is their own work and supported by evidence.

The only number is inside the second standard: a mixture means at least two different types of learning activity.

Your window and the odds

The orthoptist renewal window opens 1 June 2027 and closes 31 August 2027. The HCPC randomly selects 2.5 per cent of each profession at the start of its window, which for a profession of this size means a small number of people each cycle. Only registrants of two years or more are eligible, selection is computer-generated, and it can recur.

You are emailed at the start of the window with a message in your online account, have approximately three months to submit, and receive a reminder about a month before the deadline. Confirm the dates at source — the HCPC's renewals page carries the table and its own update stamp is inconsistent with the dates it lists.

What counts for an orthoptist

Orthoptics is a small, specialised profession, and the practical difficulty with standard two is breadth rather than effort. A profile can easily consist entirely of clinical sessions and in-house updates on one patient group.

Things that count and are categorically different: supervising or teaching students, service evaluation and audit, reading and research written up with its effect on practice, extended-role training such as injection or glaucoma clinics, equipment or technique evaluation, work on referral pathways with ophthalmology or optometry colleagues, presenting at a regional or national meeting, and involvement in guideline or protocol development.

Each needs a line explaining what changed in your practice and what the patient got out of it, because standards three and four are about consequence rather than attendance. Our guide to what to include in an HCPC CPD profile sets out the structure, and the key mechanical detail is the dated list: assessors use it to spot gaps of more than three consecutive months that have not been accounted for.

If you are the one selected

In a profession this size, selection feels personal in a way it does not for radiographers or physiotherapists. It is worth being clear that it is not: the HCPC describes the selection as computer-generated at random, and the only eligibility filter is having been registered for two years or more.

Practically, three things make the difference between submitting and deferring. Keep the record as you go rather than at renewal, because the dated list is the part that cannot be reconstructed credibly. Write the outcome line at the time, while you still remember what changed. And do not wait for formal courses to count as CPD — the HCPC approves no activities and endorses no providers, so the informal learning that makes up most of a small profession's development is as admissible as anything with a certificate.

If you genuinely cannot submit, defer. The HCPC grants it for unavoidable circumstances and seven orthoptists did exactly that in the last cycle without consequence. Just do not treat it as the plan.

The same standards everywhere

The five CPD standards apply identically to all fifteen HCPC professions. Only the renewal window, the cohort size and the assessor's profession change, and at least one assessor reading your profile will be an orthoptist.

So the acceptance rates across professions measure recording habits rather than regulatory difficulty. The clinical scientist figures, at 89.5 per cent accepted, show what a profession looks like when documenting evidence and outcome is already part of the working day.