HCPC CPD requirements for physiotherapists, and registration renewal

The HCPC CPD requirements for physiotherapists are not a number of hours. The regulator's approach is flexible and outcomes based: you keep a continuous record of your CPD, the activities have to be a mixture and relevant to your current or future practice, you have to be able to show they improved your practice and benefited the people using your service, and if you are asked you submit a written profile with evidence. At each renewal the HCPC randomly selects 2.5 per cent of each profession and asks that group for their profile. Everything on this page was read on the regulator's own site on 26 October 2026 and is dated, because fees change and renewal windows move.

This page is written for physiotherapists on the UK register, and for overseas physiotherapists looking at registering here, which is a search that comes as much from Australia and New Zealand as from Britain. It covers CPD, the audit and renewal. The wider admin of UK practice is in the guides on working as a self-employed physiotherapist and starting a private physiotherapy practice in the UK.

What the HCPC CPD standards actually require

There are five HCPC standards for CPD, and they are short. Registrants must maintain a continuous, up to date and accurate record of their CPD activities. They must demonstrate that those activities are a mixture of learning relevant to current or future practice. They must seek to make sure their CPD has contributed to the quality of their practice and service delivery, and that it benefits the service user. And on request they must present a written profile, which has to be their own work and be supported by evidence.

Read those again with the word "mixture" in mind, because it is the standard most profiles fall short on. A year of eight short online courses is not a mixture. Work-based learning, supervision and peer discussion, reading, teaching, formal courses, service development and audit all count, and a profile that shows two or three kinds of activity feeding into each other reads completely differently from a list of certificates.

Notice the direction of the standards as well. Three of the five are about effect rather than activity: did your practice change, did service delivery improve, did the person in front of you get something out of it. A certificate proves attendance. The standards ask for the consequence.

How many HCPC CPD hours per year do you need?

None are specified, and that is the honest answer rather than a loophole. The regulator's published approach is flexible and based on outcomes, which it explains by the breadth of professions it registers, so there is no hours target for physiotherapists to hit and no points to collect.

What that means in practice is that you cannot discharge the requirement by attending things. You discharge it by keeping a record that shows a mixture of relevant activity and what came of it. A reasonable test: could you describe three things you do differently this year, name what prompted each, and produce one piece of evidence for each? If yes, the volume question answers itself. If no, more hours will not fix it.

Note the one hard rule inside the flexibility. The record has to be continuous. A profile assembled in a panic in April from memory and old emails is the version that fails, and it fails on standard one before anybody assesses the content. Twenty minutes a month in a document that lives in one place is the whole job.

The HCPC CPD audit, and who gets picked

At the start of each renewal the HCPC randomly selects 2.5 per cent of each profession and asks them to submit a CPD profile. The selection is computer generated, so being picked once does not protect you next time, and you can be selected again. Registrants who have been registered for less than two years are not audited, which means a new graduate is not asked at their first renewal.

If you are selected you will be told, and you will be sent information about completing the profile. The regulator says the majority of registrants pass when selected, which is worth holding on to, because the pages that rank highest on this subject after the regulator's own are either several years old or written by people selling courses, and both tend to present the audit as a threat. It is a sampling exercise with a submission deadline.

If something in your life makes the deadline impossible, there is a deferral route, and asking early is better than submitting something thin. The profile is also assessed on what you wrote and the evidence you attached, so unexplained evidence does no work: the assessor cannot infer the reasoning you left out.

What do HCPC CPD audit examples have to show?

The profile has four parts, and the regulator sets the structure, not you.

1. A summary of your recent work or practice, up to 500 words. What your role is, where, with whom, and what the work actually involves.
2. A dated list of your CPD activities, with no stated word limit.
3. A personal statement, up to 1,500 words, which is where the standards are actually met. This is where you explain how your activities are a mixture, how they relate to your practice, what changed as a result and how the people using your service benefited.
4. Supporting evidence. There is no set number of items, and you only need evidence for the activities you discussed in your personal statement.

So the practical shape of a good profile is narrow and deep rather than wide and thin. Choose a handful of activities you can genuinely trace through to a change in practice, write them up properly in the statement, and attach the evidence for those. Evidence can be ordinary: a reflective note, a changed protocol, a patient outcome record, a teaching plan, notes from a supervision session, a service audit before and after.

Two kinds of evidence are already sitting in your own system, and both get forgotten. Outcome measure data from your own caseload shows service delivery, not attendance; our outcome measures guide covers which ones travel well. Your own records are the other one, where a change in how you assess or document something is visible over time, written with the records standards in mind. Remember that evidence containing patient information has to be anonymised before it goes anywhere near a profile, and that the HCPC's records standards require you to protect records from inappropriate access, which includes the copy you paste into a document for the regulator.

What happens if your CPD profile does not meet the standards?

You can appeal. The regulator's own wording is that if it decides your profile does not meet its standards you may appeal against that decision, and there is a separate deferral route for registrants who cannot meet the submission deadline. Neither is a rare or shameful event, and both are better used early than explained late.

What tends to go wrong is narrower than most people fear. A list of activities with no personal statement linking them to practice. Evidence attached for activities the statement never mentions, which the assessor cannot connect to anything. A record that clearly started the week the letter arrived. And a profile written as a defence rather than as an account of what you learned, which reads as though there is something to defend.

If you are selected and you are not confident, work in this order. Read the standards again and write the personal statement against them, one standard at a time. Pick fewer activities and explain them better. Then ask a colleague who has been through it to read it before you submit, which is itself a CPD activity you can record next cycle.

CPD for physiotherapists: what counts in a normal week

Most of it is already happening and going unrecorded. You talked a complex patient through with a colleague, then read a paper because of that patient and did something differently the next week. You supervised a student, which teaches the supervisor at least as much. A referral did not fit the usual pattern, so you went back to the guideline.

Learning a piece of kit or a new system counts too, and the part worth writing down is what it changed about your notes. Our guides on SOAP notes and red flags are the sort of reference reading that belongs in the list, as long as the line beside it says what changed.

Build the habit around three questions, written down at the time. What did I learn, what did I change, and how do I know it made a difference? That last question is the one the standards actually ask, and it is the one nobody can reconstruct in April.

If you are self-employed or working alone, the gap is usually peer contact and not more courses, and it shows up in the profile as well. Peer supervision, a case discussion group, or a standing arrangement with one colleague will produce better evidence than another webinar, and it is also the single most useful thing for working alone generally, which our guide on running a solo practice goes into.

Registration renewal dates and the fee

HCPC registration runs on a two yearly cycle, by profession, on fixed dates. For physiotherapists the window the regulator's own page listed on 26 October 2026 opens on 1 Feb 2028 with a deadline of 30 Apr 2028. The window before that one, in February to April 2026, has closed. Because the dates repeat every two years and the page is updated as each window passes, check the regulator's when to renew page for your own date rather than counting forwards from a date in an article.

The HCPC registration renewal fee, read on the regulator's paying renewal fees page on 26 October 2026, is 246.68 pounds for two years, which is 123.34 pounds per year. New UK graduates from an HCPC approved course pay half that for their first two professional years, which the page gives as 123.34 pounds in total, or 61.67 pounds per year. Those figures came into effect on 29 April 2025 following a consultation in 2024, and the regulator says changes to fees are made after consultation and engagement, so treat any figure in any article, including this one, as a date-stamped reading rather than a permanent fact. Check the fee on the HCPC's own page before you budget.

If you are self-employed, the fee is a professional expense for tax purposes in the ordinary way, and the HCPC's own fees and tax section is where to confirm the current position. The self-employment side is covered in the self-employed physiotherapist guide.

Checking the register and your own account

Four of the most common searches around HCPC registration are account tasks, and no third party site can perform them. Checking whether somebody is on the register, finding your registration number, logging in to your online account and tracking an application all happen on the regulator's own site, and anyone else offering to do it for you should be treated with suspicion.

That matters for patients too. If a patient asks how to check that their physiotherapist is registered, send them to the HCPC's own register search. In the UK, physiotherapist and physiotherapy are protected titles, so the register is the answer to the question, and it is free to search. Patients coming to you through the NHS route have usually had that question answered for them; the NHS physio self-referral guide covers how that route works.

Registering from outside the UK

If you trained and practised outside the UK and have not been registered here before, the international application route is the one that applies. The HCPC sets out the stages: check your eligibility for the route, prepare and certify your documents, apply online, then the review process and its possible outcomes, and finally what keeps you registered afterwards. It tells applicants to read the standards and guidance once eligibility is checked, which is the step most people skip.

This page does not restate the eligibility criteria, the document requirements or the timescales, because they are detailed, they change, and the regulator's own pages are the only safe source for them. Read those, then budget for the application fee separately from the renewal fee, since the two are different and the international scrutiny fee is the larger of them.

One point for overseas applicants that the search data makes clear: a lot of this searching happens in Australia and New Zealand, where registration is national and the systems look superficially similar. They are not. HCPC registration is its own process with its own standards, and your home registration does not transfer.

The short version

There is no CPD hours target. There are five standards, and three of them are about what changed rather than what you attended, so keep a continuous record with a mixture of activities and a note of the consequence of each.

At each renewal 2.5 per cent of each profession is selected at random for audit, you are not audited in your first two years, selection can repeat, and most people who are selected pass. The profile is four parts: a 500 word summary of your work, a dated activity list, a 1,500 word personal statement, and evidence for the activities you discussed.

Renewal is two yearly on fixed dates by profession, and the window the regulator listed for physiotherapists when this page was written runs from 1 Feb 2028 to 30 Apr 2028. The fee read on the same day was 246.68 pounds for two years, halved for new UK graduates in their first two professional years. Both the dates and the fee come from the HCPC's own pages, and that is where to check them before you rely on them.

References

1. Health and Care Professions Council. Continuing professional development: our approach, the random selection of 2.5 per cent of each profession at renewal, and the outcomes-based approach. Accessed 26 October 2026. https://www.hcpc-uk.org/cpd/
2. Health and Care Professions Council. Standards of continuing professional development, standards 1 to 5. Accessed 26 October 2026. https://www.hcpc-uk.org/standards/standards-of-continuing-professional-development/
3. Health and Care Professions Council. The CPD audit process: selection, eligibility, repeat selection, outcomes and appeals. Accessed 26 October 2026. https://www.hcpc-uk.org/cpd/cpd-audits/
4. Health and Care Professions Council. Putting your CPD profile together: the four parts, the 500 word summary and the 1,500 word personal statement. Accessed 26 October 2026. https://www.hcpc-uk.org/cpd/completing-a-cpd-profile-for-audit/putting-your-cpd-profile-together/
5. Health and Care Professions Council. When to renew: renewal windows by profession, with physiotherapists opening 1 Feb 2028 and the deadline 30 Apr 2028, on a two-yearly cycle. Accessed 26 October 2026. https://www.hcpc-uk.org/registration/registration-renewals/when-to-renew/
6. Health and Care Professions Council. Paying renewal fees: renewal fee of 246.68 pounds for two years (123.34 pounds per year), reduced by 50 per cent for new UK graduates for their first two professional years. Page updated 9 September 2026. Accessed 26 October 2026. https://www.hcpc-uk.org/registration/your-registration/fees-and-tax/paying-renewal-fees/
7. Health and Care Professions Council. Changes to our registration fees: the current fees came into effect 29 April 2025 following a 2024 consultation. Accessed 26 October 2026. https://www.hcpc-uk.org/registration/your-registration/fees-and-tax/changes-to-our-registration-fees/
8. Health and Care Professions Council. International applications. Accessed 26 October 2026. https://www.hcpc-uk.org/registration/getting-on-the-register/international-applications/
9. Health and Care Professions Council. Standards of conduct, performance and ethics, standards 10.1 to 10.3 on records. Accessed 26 October 2026. https://www.hcpc-uk.org/standards/standards-of-conduct-performance-and-ethics/

Written and checked by the PocketPhysio editorial team. Last updated 2026-10-26.