The Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC) is consulting with registrants including radiographers about proposals to increase the renewal fee from £90 to £106 per year - a rise of almost 18%.
The Council claims that the increase is needed to "support our new strategic focus of promoting professionalism and preventing fitness to practise issues from arising. We also need to continue to invest in the services we offer to registrants. The consultation takes place in the context of keeping pace with the cost of inflation and the impact on our operations and income when social workers in England transfer to Social Work England in 2019."
The HCPC's operating costs are funded by radiographers and the other professionals on the register.
Marc Seale, the HCPC’s chief executive and registrar said, “The consultation sets out where the registrants’ fees are spent and why the increases are needed. It highlights how these increases compare to our existing fees and provides information on our financial performance, including the efficiencies we have already made.
"It also shows how the proposed increases compare with other regulators. If adopted, we would continue to have the lowest renewal fee of all the health and care regulators overseen by the Professional Standards Authority.”
The consultation will close on Friday, 14 December 2018.
If the proposals are adopted, the changes would be effective from 1 October 2019. Existing registrants would pay the new renewal fee when their profession next renews its registration. For radiographers this is December 2019.
The last time the fees rose - by 12.5% - a member of parliament tried to introduce an Early Day Motion in protest at the increase.
See the HCPC fees consultation.