How many CPD hours does the HCPC require? What the standards actually say

Ask a group of HCPC registrants how many CPD hours they need and you will get a range of confident, contradictory answers. Thirty. Fifty. Whatever your employer says. The correct answer is that there is no number, and knowing that changes how you should plan your two years.

The short answer: the HCPC sets no hours and no points

The HCPC is explicit about this. On its CPD requirements page it states: "We do not set a number of hours or points that you have to complete and we do not 'approve' or 'endorse' any CPD activities."

That second half matters as much as the first. There is no HCPC-approved course list. A study day badged as "HCPC accredited" by a commercial provider is not accredited by the HCPC, because the HCPC does not accredit anything. What it looks at is what you learned and what changed as a result.

The confusion usually comes from three places:

• Other regulators do set numbers. The NMC requires 35 hours of CPD relevant to your scope of practice over the three years since your last renewal, of which at least 20 must be participatory. Nurses talk in hours, and the habit spreads.
• Employers set numbers. Many trusts and private providers require a certain number of study days or mandatory training hours. That is an employment requirement, not a registration one.
• Professional bodies run their own schemes. Useful, often hours-based, and entirely separate from HCPC registration.

If you are a nurse or midwife rather than an HCPC registrant, the hours question does have an answer, and we have covered it in NMC CPD hours for revalidation.

What the HCPC requires instead: five standards

The standards of continuing professional development say that registrants must:

1. Maintain a continuous, up-to-date and accurate record of their CPD activities.
2. Demonstrate that their CPD activities are a mixture of learning activities relevant to current or future practice.
3. Seek to ensure that their CPD has contributed to the quality of their practice and service delivery.
4. Seek to ensure that their CPD benefits the service user.
5. Upon request, present a written profile (which must be their own work and supported by evidence) explaining how they have met the standards for CPD.

Read those again with the hours question in mind. Not one of them is a quantity. Standards 3 and 4 are about consequences: did your practice improve, and did the people you serve benefit. That is the whole design. The HCPC describes its approach as flexible and outcomes-based, precisely because a radiographer, a paramedic and an arts therapist cannot sensibly be held to the same tally.

The two rules that do behave like requirements

Two things in the standards are close to hard rules, and they are the ones people fall foul of.

A mixture of learning. Standard 2 means at least two different types of learning activity. The HCPC gives the example directly: if you had only read professional journals and done nothing else, you would not meet the standard. A pile of certificates from the same kind of event has the same problem.

Regularity. Standard 1 says the record must be continuous and added to on an ongoing basis. A two-year gap followed by a fortnight of frantic course-booking is not a continuous record, and it tends to be visible in the dates.

The registration cycle is two years, and if you are audited the HCPC will look at what you did over those previous two years.

What "outcomes" actually looks like on the page

This is where most CPD records fail. People log the activity and stop. The activity is the input. The standards ask for the output.

Weak entry. Attended a half-day update on sepsis recognition, 3 hours. Certificate attached. Entry that meets standards 3 and 4. Attended a half-day update on sepsis recognition. The session changed how I weight a normal temperature in an older adult, which I had been treating as reassuring. In the following weeks I escalated two patients earlier than I would previously have done, both on the basis of physiology rather than a single reading. I have since raised this with the team at handover so that the point is not held only by me. Certificate attached, along with my anonymised notes from the session.

Same activity. Same three hours. The second one demonstrates improvement to practice and benefit to service users, which is what an assessor is reading for. The first one demonstrates attendance.

How to plan a cycle without a number

Since there is no total to hit, plan around coverage instead.

1. Start from your scope of practice. List the things you actually do, and be honest about where your confidence is thinnest. Your CPD must be relevant to your current or future practice, so your gaps are your syllabus.
2. Pick at least three different types of activity across the two years. Two is the floor. Three gives you room if one turns out to be thin.
3. Include something interactive. The HCPC notes that interactive activities that encourage self-reflection, such as peer discussion, tend to be the most effective. It is not a requirement, but it is a strong hint about what good looks like.
4. Write the outcome within a week of the activity, while you still remember what surprised you. This is the step everyone skips, and it is the one the standards are built around.
5. Do not wait to be audited. If your record already answers "what changed", the CPD profile is largely assembly work rather than reconstruction from memory.

Reflection is not a separate box to tick

Reflection is not a sixth standard. It is the mechanism by which you satisfy the third and fourth. When you write down what you learned, what you would do differently and what your service users got out of it, you are producing exactly the evidence the standards ask for. A well-written reflective account on a single difficult case can do more work in a CPD profile than a stack of attendance certificates.

If the case you want to reflect on was distressing rather than merely instructive, keep the writing pointed at learning and decisions rather than replaying the distress. Reflection asks what you would do next time. Rumination just circles. If a case is still sitting heavily with you, speak to occupational health or your union, and the Samaritans are on 116 123, free, at any time.

The one place your own effort is non-negotiable

Standard 5 says the profile must be your own work. The HCPC states that a profile written by someone else, or containing text taken from other people's profiles, would not meet the standard, and that suspected plagiarism stops the assessment and goes to fitness to practise. You can absolutely discuss your CPD with colleagues, and the HCPC encourages it. You cannot outsource the writing.

That distinction is the whole point of how Reflectory works. It interviews you about the case, one question at a time, then produces the account in your own words from your own answers, with identifiable details screened out and the use of AI assistance disclosed in the document itself. You remain the author, which is what the standard requires. You can try it with a single reflection and see whether the questions get more out of you than a blank page does.