Regulating doctors, ensuring good medical practice

Starting revalidation

This page provides information for licensed doctors about the first cycle of revalidation.

Revalidation started on 3 December 2012. This followed a decision made by the Secretary of State for Health in October 2012 that revalidation should be introduced at the end of this year.

The four UK health departments (and the NHS Revalidation Support Team in England) have worked with responsible officers to develop national plans for how revalidation will start in each country.

Each country has signed up to a set of principles that will ensure revalidation is implemented in a way that is fair and consistent for all licensed doctors across the UK.

The first ‘cycle’ of revalidation, in which every currently licensed doctor will revalidate for the first time, started on 3 December 2012 and will end in March 2018.

The timetable

Our plan for the first cycle is to revalidate:

  • medical leaders and the majority of responsible officers by March 2013 (year ‘zero’)
  • around 20% of licensed doctors between April 2013 and the end of March 2014 (year ‘one’)
  • around 40% of licensed doctors between April 2014 and March 2015 (year ‘two’)
  • and the remaining 40% of licensed doctors between April 2015 and March 2016 (year ‘three’)

This means we should revalidate the majority of currently licensed doctors by the end of March 2016. We want to revalidate all licensed doctors by March 2018 – the end of the first cycle.

Your first revalidation

Your first revalidation will be sometime between April 2013 and March 2016.

In December 2012, we will start to tell doctors the date we want to receive their first revalidation recommendation from their responsible officer. Every licensed doctor should receive their date by the end of January 2013. We will also send you a formal revalidation notice. You will receive this four months before your recommendation is due from your responsible officer.

We have worked closely with your responsible officer to set the date they will submit their first recommendation about you. We have done this because we believe responsible officers are better placed than we are to know when you are likely to be ready for revalidation. They have used supplementary guidance that we have agreed with the four UK health departments to assess this.