Fees

When PAs and AAs apply to become regulated professionals, they’ll need to pay a fee of £320 which covers their first year of registration.

In the future, they’ll also pay an annual fee to remain registered with us. This should be around the same figure, although we’ll review it each year in line with inflation.

We aim to keep all of our fees as low as possible while ensuring we can carry out our statutory responsibilities.

Below we’ve outlined what the fee covers and how we’ve calculated it.

What the fee covers

The fee covers the expected cost of regulating PAs and AAs and fulfilling our statutory responsibilities, as outlined in legislation, to:

• set the standards of patient care and professional behaviours PAs and AAs need to meet
• set the outcomes and standards that students qualifying from PA and AA courses must meet to achieve registration, and approve the curricula that courses must deliver 
• check who is eligible to work as a PA or AA in the UK and that they continue to meet the professional standards we set throughout their careers
• investigate where there are concerns that patient safety, or the public’s confidence in PAs and AAs, may be at risk, and take action if needed.

The fee will also contribute to our general organisational costs and overheads, as well as our work to provide guidance and support to PAs and AAs, helping them understand their professional responsibilities and maintain the standards expected throughout their careers.

Regulation of PAs and AAs will be funded through their own fees, with the exception of initial and transitional costs, which are covered by the Department of Health and Social Care.  

How we’ve calculated the fee 

The costs of regulating PAs and AAs will be funded by the fees they pay, just as doctors pay for their regulation.

We calculated the fee based on the anticipated costs of regulating PAs and AAs and fulfilling the statutory duties outlined in legislation.

We used an activity-based costing model to analyse the regulatory activities we undertake for doctors. This helped us identify activities that will apply to PA and AA regulation, as well as activities that will differ.

For example:

• We regulate the Foundation Programme and a framework for post-qualification development (or specialty training) for doctors. Currently PAs and AAs don’t have post qualification frameworks for us to regulate or quality assure.
• Doctors can hold either a registration-only status or a registration with a licence to practise. In contrast, PAs and AAs will only have a single registration status. 
• PAs and AAs won’t immediately undergo revalidation because we need to consult on and develop the rules for how it will be delivered during the transition period.
• The new legislation for PA and AA regulation provides for greater flexibility in the management of fitness to practise cases where there’s no risk to patient safety and regulatory action isn’t needed.

PAs and AAs will have a flat fee structure, with a single registration fee and annual fee, each expected to be around £320 initially. 

The fee structure for doctors varies based on their career stage and income. Newly qualified doctors in their first five years of practice automatically receive a discount of over 60% on the full annual fee, currently paying £174. And those earning less than £36,000 can apply for a 50% discount on the full annual fee, which is currently £455.

This means that some PAs and AAs will pay more than doctors for their registration and annual fee, while others will pay less. As the true cost of regulating PAs and AAs becomes clearer over time, we’ll keep our fees under review to understand if any adjustments are required.