How fees are used

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 a fixed term discount to newly qualified doctors for up to five years. And we offer a 50% discount on the annual fee to doctors whose income is below the income 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.

Supporting doctors with their practice

We set the standards of patient care and professional behaviours expected of all doctors in the UK and we create practical resources to help them apply these standards in practice. 

In 2024, we published an updated version of the professional standards – Good medical practice – and we’re working with employers and healthcare organisations to embed them across the UK. We reviewed and consulted on these standards in collaboration with patients, doctors and healthcare organisations across the four countries of the UK. The updated standards focus on behaviours and values which help to create respectful, fair, and compassionate workplaces for doctors and patients.

We also continue to work with doctors and organisations at a local level to support patient safety and quality improvement through our Outreach teams. And we’ll keep running our free workshops to support doctors new to the UK – Welcome to UK practice. These provide practical advice, information about the professional standards and we explore different ethical scenarios that doctors are likely to come across.

Overseeing the quality of doctors’ education and training

We make sure that doctors’ education and training prepares them to deliver good, safe patient care. We do this by approving doctors' undergraduate and postgraduate training; and assessing all courses and programmes through reviews and regular monitoring.

Through our quality assurance processes, we check that doctors’ training is being delivered in environments that are safe, effective and supportive. Our national training survey, which asks doctors across the UK to share their experiences of training, helps us to check that our standards are being met, and provides us with the evidence we need to take action where this isn't the case. This could include setting requirements for organisations to improve specific parts of their training programme, which stay in place until doctors have told us that improvements have been made and we’re confident they can be sustained.

We’re also working with education and training providers and employers across the UK to tackle discrimination, disadvantage and unfairness in education and training. We’ve set targets to address areas of inequality by 2031. In 2024, we’ll continue to partner with a range of organisations to create and test interventions that aim to address these issues.

Revalidation and managing the medical register

We make sure that every doctor has the right knowledge, skills, qualifications and experience to work across the UK and deliver good, safe patient care. We do this by maintaining an official list called the medical register.

We’re doing all we can to make sure our registration routes are as flexible and accessible as possible, as part of our efforts to help support the future sustainability of the medical workforce. We also run the Professional and Linguistic Assessments Board test, or the PLAB test, which helps us to make sure doctors who qualified abroad have the right knowledge and skills to practise medicine in the UK.

We continue to work with responsible officers and suitable persons to make sure that doctors are working to the professional standards we set, and that their knowledge and skills are up to date.

Managing complaints about doctors

We assess concerns about doctors and act if we believe patient safety or the public’s confidence in the profession is at risk. Where a concern is raised about a doctor, we’ll always consider the circumstances and any relevant context we’re aware of when deciding whether we need to take it forward.

We recognise that investigations are stressful for everyone involved. In recent years, we’ve worked with mental health expert Professor Louis Appleby to develop and implement changes to reduce the impact of investigations on patients and doctors. We regularly review how these changes are helping; and we continue to identify other areas we can make improvements, such as making sure our communications are as clear and compassionate as possible.

Inequality and prejudice contribute to poorer care, which is why we’ve put tackling these issues at the heart of our 2021-25 corporate strategy. And together with others across the UK’s healthcare systems, we’re working towards our target to eliminate inequalities facing doctors in fitness to practise referrals from employers. 

Data, research and insights

Our data, research and insights programme help us to better understand the challenges faced by doctors and patients, and the impact of our work. This informs where we focus our efforts to support doctors to deliver good, safe patient care.

We produce a series of reports that focus on medical education and practice: 

• The state of medical education and practice in the UK workplace experiences report uses data from a survey we commission to understand how doctors’ experiences of practising in the UK are changing, and to identify action that the UK health services can take to support doctors and patients.
• The state of medical education and practice in the UK workforce report analyses trends from the medical register to provide a data resource for policymakers and workforce planners.

We also regularly commission research to explore the reasons why doctors leave or join the register. Our data on the makeup of the medical register, revalidation, training and fitness to practise is available through GMC Data Explorer, a free online resource.

Managing the organisation

The Professional Standards Authority carry out an annual, independent review to check we’re delivering all our statutory functions effectively. We’re pleased to have achieved all 18 of their Standards of Good Regulation in their latest review, which covers our work from October 2022 to September 2023.

As a four country regulator we have offices in England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. We work with doctors, employers, educators, and patient organisations to help make sure doctors can deliver a high standard of care to patients.

Like other organisations, our operating costs rise due to inflation. We keep any increases to our fees as low as possible, while still making sure we can continue to work with patients, doctors, and other stakeholders to support good, safe patient care across the UK and maintain our regulatory functions.

We regularly review our staff benefits to make sure that they are cost effective. For example, our staff have the opportunity to opt-in to a private healthcare provision and this is a taxable benefit.

You can find out more about our work by reading our annual report and our national reports for Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales.