GMC fees rise for 2015
The annual fee paid by doctors to retain their registration with the General Medical Council (GMC) will increase by £30 – from £390 to £420 – from April 2015. This restores the fee to the level it was at in 2010.
For the past five years the GMC has either frozen or cut the fee, while delivering reforms such as revalidation and the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service, taking on new responsibilities such as the oversight of postgraduate education, and dealing with a 64% rise in complaints about doctors between 2010 and 2013.
“We recognise that these are challenging times for all doctors – especially those at the start of their careers,” said the GMC in a statement. “We are therefore freezing our fee for provisional registration, maintaining it at £90, and keeping our low income threshold set at £32,000. Doctors below the threshold will be eligible for a 50% reduction in their annual fee.
“Raising the fee will make sure we continue to meet our wide-ranging responsibilities. They include processing 75,000 revalidation decisions next year and coping with a significant increase in more serious complaints about doctors. For the first time, the GMC fee includes a government levy to fund the Professional Standards Authority. This will cost £600k in 2015, rising to £800k a year from 2016.
“Raising the fee will also help us to deliver our reform agenda. This includes making our medical register much more useful, sharing more of our data about doctors and the organisations in which they practise and train, developing our plans for a UK licensing exam, and raising standards of medical practice by working more closely with doctors to help them with the challenging issues they face as professionals.
“In 2015 we will expand our professionalism work as well as roll out our programme for doctors new to UK practice to ease them through this critical point in their career.”
The GMC said that it is committed to providing value for money and that this year it is on track to save nearly £9 million – through a combination of in-year work plus ongoing gains from projects started in previous years.
Source: General Medical Council
