What is CPD? Continuing professional development explained

CPD stands for continuing professional development. It is the ongoing process of learning, training and reflecting that keeps your skills current throughout your career - and for millions of UK workers it is not optional. Nurses, teachers, accountants, solicitors, engineers and social workers all have to evidence CPD to keep their registration or membership. Even where nobody formally requires it, a well-kept CPD record is one of the strongest things you can bring to an appraisal, a pay review or a job interview.

This guide covers what CPD actually means, who needs it, how many hours different professions expect, what counts, and how to record it so the record stands up when someone checks.

What is CPD?

Continuing professional development is any structured learning you do after your initial qualification that maintains or improves your professional knowledge, skills and behaviours. The word "continuing" matters: CPD is not a course you finish, it is a habit you keep for the whole of your working life.

CPD covers three broad types of activity:

• Formal learning - courses, qualifications, workshops, webinars, conferences and e-learning with clear learning outcomes.
• Work-based learning - shadowing, mentoring, being mentored, taking on a new responsibility, secondments and on-the-job training.
• Self-directed learning - reading journals and industry publications, listening to podcasts, research, writing articles and reflective practice.

Most professional bodies expect a mix. A year of CPD that is nothing but reading articles looks thin next to one that combines a course, some work-based learning and honest reflection on what changed as a result.

Who needs to do CPD?

If you belong to a professional body or hold a licence to practise, CPD is almost certainly a condition of staying registered. The requirements vary enormously by profession:

• Nurses and midwives (NMC) - 35 hours of CPD over three years for revalidation, with at least 20 hours participatory, plus five pieces of practice-related feedback and five written reflections.
• Doctors (GMC) - annual appraisal with supporting CPD, typically around 50 hours or credits per year across a five-year revalidation cycle.
• Teachers - no statutory hours in England, but the Early Career Framework entitles new teachers to two years of structured development, and most schools expect evidence of ongoing CPD at appraisal.
• Accountants - ACCA members complete 40 units a year (21 verifiable); ICAEW members moved to a risk-based hours regime in 2023.
• Solicitors (SRA) - no fixed hours, but a continuing competence requirement: you must reflect on your practice, address learning needs and record how you did it.
• Engineers (Engineering Council) - CPD expected for CEng, IEng and EngTech registrants, with random sampling of records.
• Social workers (Social Work England) - at least two pieces of CPD recorded per year, one with peer reflection.
• HR and L&D professionals (CIPD) - CPD expected of members, assessed at upgrading.

Outside the regulated professions, CPD is technically voluntary - but employers increasingly ask for it at appraisal, and a portable record you own is worth far more than a training spreadsheet that stays behind when you change jobs.

How many CPD hours do you need?

There is no single answer, which is why so many people search for one. Roughly:

• Regulated healthcare: 35 hours over 3 years (NMC) to around 50 hours a year (medical royal colleges).
• Accountancy and finance: 21 to 40 verifiable hours or units a year, depending on the body and your role risk.
• Law: competence-based rather than hours-based in England and Wales; hours-based in Scotland and many other jurisdictions.
• Everyone else: a widely used benchmark is 20 to 30 hours a year, split between role-specific learning and wider development.

The honest answer is to check your own regulator or professional body's current guidance, set that as your target, and track against it. Our free CPD tracker lets you set separate targets for role and regulatory learning versus wider personal development, so you can see both at a glance.

What counts as CPD?

More than most people think. If you learned something relevant to your work and can say what changed as a result, it probably counts. Common examples:

• Completing an online course or attending a workshop, webinar or conference
• Reading a journal article, book or industry guidance (yes, including this one)
• Listening to a professional podcast or watching a recorded lecture
• Mentoring a colleague, or being mentored
• Delivering training or presenting to peers
• Reflecting on a piece of work that went well or badly
• Learning a new system, process or regulation relevant to your role

What makes it CPD rather than just "something you did" is the record: the date, the time it took, what you learned and what you will do differently. See our guide to CPD evidence examples for what good looks like.

CPD points vs CPD hours

Some bodies count hours, some count points or units, and some count credits. In most schemes one point or unit equals one hour of learning, but not always - ACCA units, for example, map to hours but with a verifiable and non-verifiable split. Our article on CPD points vs CPD hours breaks down the conversions for the major UK bodies.

How to record CPD

A CPD record that stands up to scrutiny has five ingredients for every entry:

1. What you did - the activity, provider and date.
2. How long it took - hours, so they can be totalled against your target.
3. What you learned - the knowledge or skill, in your own words.
4. How you will apply it - the change to your practice.
5. Evidence - a certificate, notes or reflection attached where available.

You can keep this in a notebook, a spreadsheet or a purpose-built tool. Notebooks get lost and spreadsheets stay with employers, which is why we built a free personal CPD log that belongs to you, travels between jobs and exports to PDF or CSV whenever a regulator, appraiser or interviewer asks. If you already keep records elsewhere, our CPD record template shows the fields that matter, and you can import a CSV straight into the log.

Why reflection matters more than hours

Regulators have steadily moved away from counting hours towards judging impact. The NMC wants written reflections. The SRA wants you to show you reflected on your competence. Social Work England wants peer reflection. The pattern is the same: an entry that says "attended safeguarding webinar, 2 hours" is weak; an entry that says what you learned and what you changed on shift the following week is strong.

Build the reflection in at the time, not the night before your appraisal. Two or three sentences written on the day are worth more than a page reconstructed six months later.

Free CPD: where to find it

Cost should never be the barrier. Professional bodies, unions, employers, MOOC platforms and open universities all publish free learning that counts towards CPD. We keep a running guide to free CPD opportunities, and every article on this site can be logged to your CPD record with one click.

How long should you keep CPD records?

Keep evidence for at least one full cycle beyond the one it belongs to - for a three-year revalidation cycle that means around six years. Some regulators audit further back, and old records are useful evidence of progression when you change roles. Our guide on how long to keep CPD records covers the main UK bodies.

Getting started

If you do nothing else after reading this: pick your target hours, log the last three things you learned, and write two sentences of reflection on each. That is a CPD record. Everything else is refinement.

Start your free CPD log - it takes less than 90 seconds to add your first entry, and the record is yours for life.