Osteopathy and Chiropractic CPD: What GOsC and GCC Actually Require

Osteopaths and chiropractors are the two manual-therapy professions with statutory regulation in the UK, and their CPD schemes are built on opposite principles. The General Osteopathic Council sets a three-year cycle with no binding annual figure. The General Chiropractic Council sets an annual requirement and tells registrants what to reflect on. Anyone working across both — a multidisciplinary clinic, a training provider, an employer — needs to hold the two apart, because almost nothing transfers.

This guide sets out what each regulator requires as at October 2026, and answers the question providers ask first: whether either accredits CPD.

Osteopaths: the GOsC scheme

There is no branded scheme name — GOsC simply calls it the CPD scheme. The current version took effect on 1 October 2018, under rules that extended the CPD period from one year to three, introduced the peer discussion review, set the hours, and removed the previous exemption for newly registered osteopaths.

The hours, and the figure that is not a requirement

90 hours over a three-year cycle, of which at least 45 must be learning with others. That is the whole of the binding hours obligation.

This is where most summaries go wrong. You will frequently see "30 hours a year including 15 with others" presented as the osteopathic requirement. It is not. It appears in GOsC's guidance only as an illustration of spreading CPD across the cycle — the guidance words it as "for example, 30 hours of CPD, including 15 hours learning with others per year". There is no binding annual hours requirement for osteopaths. An osteopath who did 20 hours in year one and 40 in year two is compliant, provided the cycle total and the components are met.

Osteopaths registering for the first time on or after 1 October 2018 have a shorter first cycle: 85 hours including 42.5 hours of learning with others, within two years and ten months.

The four components

All four must be complete by the end of the cycle:

• All four Osteopathic Practice Standards themes — communication and patient partnership; knowledge, skills and performance; safety and quality; professionalism
• An Objective Activity — at least one activity producing external, objective feedback on practice. Patient feedback, peer observation, clinical audit or case-based discussion all qualify, with analysis showing how it informed practice or further CPD
• Communication and Consent CPD — at least one activity in this area, reviewing the relevant standards and showing how they were applied in practice
• A Peer Discussion Review — a structured discussion of roughly one to one and a half hours, confirming all scheme elements are complete, recorded on the GOsC template

Two details that catch people out. The peer for the discussion review can be an osteopath or another health professional, chosen by the registrant — it does not have to be an osteopath. And the review counts within the 90 hours rather than on top of them. GOsC's worked example places the objective activity in year one, communication and consent in year two, and the peer discussion review towards the end of year three, but the only hard requirement is that the review is completed and recorded before the cycle ends.

Recording and declaring

There is no GOsC CPD portal. Osteopaths keep their own record in whatever format suits — paper, spreadsheet or eportfolio — and GOsC supplies a downloadable template. The o zone is the registration portal, used for renewal, not for logging CPD.

What is submitted is an annual self-declaration on the renewal form: hours completed in the previous twelve months, hours of learning with others, which standards themes were covered, whether the objective activity and the communication and consent activity are done, whether a peer has been identified, and whether the review is complete. Records and the review form are not sent in unless requested.

There is no single national deadline. Renewal falls on the anniversary of first registration, and the CPD cycle end date and the renewal date are deliberately not the same — which is the most common source of confusion among osteopaths themselves.

GOsC verifies by random selection, contacting between 5% and 10% of registrants each month and asking for evidence, often a single item, with one month to respond. On non-compliance, GOsC's guidance states that osteopaths who have not completed all activities receive a warning that failure to comply within 28 days puts them at risk of removal from the register. GOsC also has a statutory power to extend or vary the requirement for good reason, on written application with evidence.

The practising fee is £570 as a lump sum, or £590 by direct debit, and renewal requires a declaration of professional indemnity insurance of at least £5 million. Around 5,600 osteopaths are on the register.

What is changing, and what has not

A 2025 consultation proposed making CPD on professional boundaries and on equality, diversity, inclusion and belonging mandatory. Respondents were divided. A GOsC committee in March 2026 was asked to recommend the change to Council, with a final version due at Council in May 2026. No published decision confirms the change has taken effect. Until one does, treat boundaries and EDIB as strongly encouraged rather than required — which is how GOsC's own write-up describes the current position.

Chiropractors: the GCC scheme

The GCC's scheme is statutory, dating from rules in force on 1 September 2004, and it works on an annual cycle running 1 September to 31 August.

The hours

At least 30 hours of CPD each CPD year, of which at least 15 must be learning with others. New and returning registrants work pro-rata at 2.5 hours per full month registered, half of it with others — so joining on 1 January gives eight months, meaning 20 hours with 10 of them with others.

The GCC's definition of "learning with others" is stricter than most, and worth quoting to anyone buying training: it requires direct, immediate interaction. A live webinar where you can ask questions counts. A recorded webinar watched alone does not. Supporting evidence must be uploaded for any hours claimed under this heading. Separately, business-development learning does not count toward the 30 hours at all — CPD must focus on patient care or developing the profession.

Focused Reflection: the regulator picks the topic

This is the GCC's most distinctive feature and has no osteopathic equivalent. Each year the GCC requires chiropractors to reflect on a specified aspect of practice, chosen in advance and informed by fitness-to-practise cases and wider developments, and published before the CPD year begins. Registrants answer four set questions in relation to that reflection.

For the current CPD year, 1 September 2026 to 31 August 2027, the topic is Professional Boundaries in Clinical Practice, keyed to Principle E of the Code and particularly Standard E1. The previous year's topic was Safety and Quality in Clinical Practice. A provider building chiropractic CPD for this year that does not address professional boundaries is missing the one component the regulator has actually specified.

New registrants carry a second mandatory component: clinical governance, required within one year of registration for those who qualified in the last two years and are registering with the GCC for the first time. It covers standards-based care, using evidence to inform practice, clinical audit, safety incident reporting and learning, patient-reported outcome and experience measures, and reflective practice. Those hours count within the 30, not on top.

Every chiropractor must also produce a personal learning plan each year and a Reflective Learning Statement answering four set questions about the single most significant learning activity of the year.

Recording, deadline and consequences

Submission is online through the GCC registrant portal, as a six-section CPD summary report, with evidence uploaded through the portal — the GCC is explicit that documents should not be posted. The deadline is 31 August, the last day of the CPD year.

The GCC audits summaries at random. Where responses are unclear or insufficiently reflective it will work with the registrant, but where a registrant wilfully does not comply the GCC may remove them from the register. The statutory route runs: a notice giving at least 28 days to return the summary; then a final warning giving 14 days; then removal. An appeal must be lodged within 28 days of the removal notice. Restoration requires the missing CPD plus 2.5 hours for every whole month since, capped at 150 hours.

Waivers are available for exceptional circumstances such as ill health or bereavement, applied for through the portal. Work pressure, financial problems, holidays, retirement, disciplinary matters and cancelled events are generally not accepted.

One structural difference worth knowing

At the GCC, CPD and registration retention are two separate annual processes on different calendars. The CPD year ends 31 August; retention runs on the calendar year. The retention application does not mention CPD at all, and CPD non-compliance leads to removal under the CPD rules rather than by refusal of renewal. Osteopaths, by contrast, declare CPD as part of renewal. If you administer compliance for a mixed team, that is the difference most likely to trip you up.

A caution on dates and fees: the GCC's retention page gives a retention deadline in its body text but a different date in an adjacent FAQ heading, and its fees page carries no effective date. Check both directly with the GCC rather than relying on any secondary summary, including this one, close to a deadline. Around 4,000 chiropractors are on the register, up 4.3% on the previous year.

What is changing

The GCC is running "The CPD Conversation", its first formal strategic review of CPD since 2017, covering both the model and the reporting process. It is exploring a more outcomes-focused approach, longer learning cycles, a stronger role for reflective practice and simpler reporting. 2026 has been a research and evidence year. The GCC's own position is stated plainly: nothing is changing at this stage, and any change would require a formal consultation with notice. The only live 2026 change is the new Focused Reflection topic.

The two schemes side by side

Does either regulator accredit CPD providers? No.

Stated plainly, because it is the question providers ask first and the answer saves wasted effort: neither the GOsC nor the GCC operates any accreditation, approval or endorsement scheme for external CPD providers or courses. There is no application process at either, because there is nothing to apply to.

The GCC puts this in writing. Its guidance for CPD providers states that it does not accredit activities for CPD, does not approve the CPD hours advertised for courses or conferences, and has no intention of doing so in future. That guidance sets no mandatory requirements for providers — it is advisory, suggesting clear learning outcomes, relevant and current content, varied formats, self-managed quality assurance, and issuing certificates or records of participation. It is dated November 2016, so quote it with that date attached.

GOsC publishes no provider accreditation page, criteria or application route. Its approval role is confined to pre-registration education through Recognised Qualifications. Note the difference in the evidence, though: the GCC has an explicit written denial, whereas for GOsC this is an argument from absence. If you need a quotable statement for the osteopathic side, ask GOsC directly rather than citing a page.

The practical consequence is the same for both. CPD hours are self-certified by the registrant, who must justify them against the scheme's own criteria at audit. No regulator badge is available to buy or earn. What makes training usable is material that maps cleanly onto the stated requirements — for osteopaths the four practice standards themes, the objective activity and the communication and consent element; for chiropractors the current Focused Reflection topic and genuinely interactive learning-with-others hours with evidence a registrant can upload. The GCC's own suggestion that providers issue participation records exists precisely because registrants need something to produce at audit.

Both professions sit outside the two big UK healthcare CPD regimes, so comparisons mislead. Osteopathic and chiropractic CPD is not structured like HCPC's standards-based profile approach, nor like the hours-and-cycle models used by the GDC for dentists or the GOC for optometrists. Each of the five regulators does it differently, and material built for one will not satisfy another without rework.

A checklist for employers and clinic owners

• Track osteopaths against a cycle end date, not a calendar year, and do not hold them to an annual hours figure that does not exist in the rules.
• Track chiropractors against 31 August, and separately against their retention date, which is a different process.
• Diarise each osteopath's peer discussion review for year three rather than discovering it in the final month.
• Check that anything bought as chiropractic "learning with others" is genuinely interactive — recorded content watched alone will not count.
• Build this year's chiropractic CPD around professional boundaries, the topic the GCC has set.
• Do not pay a premium for CPD described as regulator-accredited. Neither regulator accredits anything, so the claim is meaningless.
• Keep participation certificates with full names and dates, because the registrant is the one who has to evidence the hours.