Accredited registers and the Professional Standards Authority

Because the titles are not protected, the accredited registers scheme is the main public-protection mechanism for UK therapy. It is worth understanding precisely, because it is often described in ways that overstate it.

What the scheme is

The Professional Standards Authority for Health and Social Care is an independent body accountable to Parliament. It has two jobs. It oversees the statutory regulators — the HCPC, the GMC, the NMC and the rest. And, since 2012, it runs a separate programme that accredits voluntary registers in occupations that are not regulated by law.

A register applies to the Authority and is assessed against a set of standards covering entry requirements, governance, information for the public, complaints handling and risk management. If it passes, it becomes an accredited register and is re-assessed periodically. The Authority accredits the register — it does not register or assess individual practitioners.

The registers you will actually meet

For adult counselling and psychotherapy, the main accredited registers include:

• BACP — the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy. Its register was the first to be accredited under the scheme, and it is the largest. Registered membership requires completing a qualifying course meeting BACP’s training requirements, or passing its Certificate of Proficiency.
• UKCP — the UK Council for Psychotherapy, which holds a national register of psychotherapists and psychotherapeutic counsellors, organised by modality through its member colleges.
• NCPS — the National Counselling and Psychotherapy Society.
• BABCP — the British Association for Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapies, which maintains the CBT Register for accredited cognitive behavioural psychotherapists.
• ACP — the Association of Child Psychotherapists, for child and adolescent psychoanalytic psychotherapists.

There are others, and the Authority publishes the full list. If you are told a register is accredited, that is checkable in a minute on the Authority’s own site — see checking a practitioner.

What accreditation does guarantee

• The register has defined entry standards, and someone other than the practitioner has checked them.
• The register requires supervision, insurance and continuing professional development, in most cases, and holds members to a published ethical framework.
• There is a complaints process with published outcomes, and a person can be removed from the register.
• The register has been examined by an independent body against consistent criteria.

That is a real filter, and it is much better than nothing.

What it does not guarantee

• It is not statutory regulation. The worst sanction available is removal from that register. It does not stop a person practising, because the title is not protected. A struck-off member can lawfully continue to advertise as a counsellor.
• It says nothing about outcomes. No register measures whether a practitioner’s clients get better.
• It does not mean the person is right for you. Fit between client and therapist is a real variable, and no register measures it either.
• Different registers set different bars. Their training requirements are not identical — which is precisely why the professional bodies have spent years working on a shared competence framework, SCoPEd, to describe the differences openly.

Accredited register, statutory register — the difference in one line

A statutory register (HCPC, GMC, NMC) is backed by law: using the protected title without being on it is a criminal offence. An accredited register is voluntary: being removed from it carries professional and reputational consequences, but no legal ones.

Both are worth checking. Neither is a substitute for the other, and for the great majority of counsellors and psychotherapists in the UK, only the second exists.