About fees
By law any doctor who wants to work in the UK must be registered with us. Doctors without registration and a licence to practise can’t treat patients in the NHS or private sectors.
All doctors must pay a fee to register with us and an annual fee to remain on the register. We aim to keep fees as low as possible, while making sure that we’re able to deliver our statutory functions. We offer a range of payment options to spread the cost of the annual fee, including paying in quarterly or in 10 monthly instalments. We give newly qualified doctors in their first five years of practice a 60% discount on their annual fee. And we offer a 50% discount on the annual fee to doctors whose income is below a certain threshold.
Because we’re funded in this way, we’re free of political influence and able to carry out our statutory duties independently. This independence allows us to support doctors with their practice, quality assure medical education and training and work with the UK health systems to develop the compassionate, fair, and inclusive environments needed to retain doctors and provide the best outcomes for patients.
We are also a registered charity. This means our focus is entirely on delivering our statutory functions for the benefit of the public. As we don’t operate to make a profit, everything we receive goes back into our work to support the delivery of good safe patient care across the UK.
This webpage has more information about how fees are used to deliver our statutory duties. Please note that doctors’ fees are not used to fund the regulation of physician associates (PAs) and anaesthesia associates (AAs). We invoice the Department of Health and Social Care for all costs arising from our work on PAs and AAs and will continue to do so until these are covered by PA and AA registration fees.