RICS CPD requirements: 20 hours, 10 formal - what actually counts

Every RICS professional member and fellow has the same annual obligation: 20 hours of CPD per calendar year, of which at least 10 hours must be formal. The record has to be submitted through the RICS CPD system, and the deadline is 31 January following the year in question.

The rule is simple. The confusion is always about what counts.

Formal CPD

Formal CPD is structured learning with clear objectives and measurable outcomes, usually delivered by someone other than you. In practice this covers:

• Structured courses, workshops and technical training
• Conferences and seminars with a defined programme
• Structured e-learning modules with assessment or defined learning outcomes
• Professional qualifications and academic study
• Structured in-house training with stated objectives
• Preparing and delivering training or a technical presentation to others

The test RICS applies is whether the activity had defined learning outcomes and produced measurable learning. A webinar you half-watched while answering email does not meet it. The same webinar, attended properly with notes and a takeaway, does.

Informal CPD

Informal CPD is self-directed learning: reading technical journals, following legislative or standards updates, private study, on-the-job learning, informal mentoring conversations, and reading RICS guidance notes and professional statements. All of it counts towards your 20 hours - just not towards the 10 formal ones.

The ethics requirement

RICS also expects members to complete the online ethics module at least once every three years. It is short, it counts as formal CPD, and it is the single easiest thing to forget until the deadline.

What to record for each entry

Your submitted record needs date, activity, hours and whether the activity was formal or informal. What RICS does not require, but every sensible surveyor keeps, is a line on what you actually learned. If you are ever asked to justify an entry, "attended half-day update on the Red Book Global Standards; changed how I evidence comparable adjustments" is a far stronger record than "valuation training - 4 hours".

Where people go wrong

• Leaving it all to January, then trying to reconstruct which webinars happened in which year
• Logging hours but not the formal/informal split, then finding you are short on formal
• Assuming CPD stops if you are on a career break or working part-time - it does not automatically, and you need to apply for a reduction
• Forgetting that delivering training counts, as does preparing it

A ten-minute-a-month habit

Twenty hours a year is not a lot. Two hours a month, with one of them formal, clears it comfortably. The problem is never the hours - it is the record. Log each activity the day it happens, tag it formal or informal, and January becomes a five-minute copy-out rather than an evening of guesswork.

Keep your CPD in one place

A record only helps if it exists before you need it. Our free CPD tracker logs an activity in seconds, tallies your hours automatically, keeps your reflections with the entry, and exports a clean PDF whenever you need evidence. Free for life for individuals - and the record belongs to you, not your employer.