Completing your application

Once you’ve successfully completed the Test of Competence, we’ll ask you to submit your full registration application.

During this stage, we'll check that you meet our other registration requirements. You'll need to provide evidence that demonstrates that you're capable of safe and effective practice in England.

What you need to do

The evidence we ask for is broken up into the following sections.

Health

We need to know that people applying to join our register meet our health requirements to ensure they can practise safely and effectively.

When completing your application you'll need to think about how any health conditions and/or disabilities you may have could affect your practice or place the safety of the people in your care at risk.

Our health and character guidance gives you detailed information about how we approach health concerns.

We'll ask you to:

• provide a self-declaration about your health and let us know about any health condition and/or disability you have which may affect your practice if you're not managing the condition appropriately
• nominate a referee to provide a supporting health declaration - this can be your registered medical practitioner (for example, your general practitioner) or a member of your employer's occupational health (OH) team
• give us your consent to contact your medical practitioner or OH team and confirm you have their consent to provide their details as part of your application.

Once you've submitted your registration application, we'll contact your referee and ask them to:

• confirm they've carried out your health assessment in the last six months
• verify and agree with the information you have given us about your health
• explain why they may not agree with what you have told us about your health
• explain why they feel you may not be capable of safe and effective practice due to a health condition and/or disability you may have
• confirm they're qualified to complete your health declaration.

You'll be able to see when they've replied to us on NMC Online.

Character

We need to ensure that people applying to join our register are of sufficiently good character to practise safely and effectively.

Our health and character guidance gives you detailed information about how we approach character concerns.

Make a self-declaration

As part of your application you'll need to make a self-declaration about your character. To support your declaration you'll need to provide the following:

• a police clearance certificate from any country you've lived in for 12 months or more (whether continuously or in total) in the last 10 years before your application, while aged 18 or over
• a standard level DBS certificate if you've lived in the UK for more than three months at the time of your application.

You can upload these certificates on NMC Online.

Nominate a referee to verify your declaration

We'll verify your self-declaration with a relevant referee (or referees where applicable). This is known as a supporting declaration.

Depending on your circumstances, we'll ask for a supporting declaration from one of the following:

• the licensing or regulatory body in the country you're currently registered with, or have been registered with in the last three years before your application
• your most recent employer, if you've worked in a healthcare setting within the three years before submitting your application
• your education institution that provided your training if you graduated, but haven't practised, in the year before submitting your application
• an NMC registrant who has known you for at least a year and who you've been in contact with in the last six months before submitting your application
• another UK-regulated healthcare professional who has known you for at least a year and who you've been in contact with in the last six months before submitting your application.

If your circumstances mean that you're unable to provide one of the above, we'll ask you to provide details for two people from our list of approved signatories.

In addition to the above, if you've ever held registration with a regulator (in the UK or overseas), but haven't been registered with them in the last three years we'll ask you to provide their details, so we can also verify your declaration with them.

We'll ask you to give us your permission to contact them to request the supporting statement. You'll also need to provide their contact details and confirm you have their consent to provide them to us as part of your application so we can contact them.

The person who verifies your character declaration should not be a relative or former employee of yours.

Tell us about any cautions, convictions and determinations

You need to tell us about any:

• police charges, cautions, convictions or conditional discharges
• determinations made by any regulatory body in the UK (other than the NMC) or overseas.

We don't need to know about any:

• protected police charges, cautions, convictions or conditional discharges that would not be shown on a police clearance or Disclosure and Barring Services (DBS) check completed in the UK
• police charges where the police took no further action
• motoring offences (unless it resulted in disqualification).

If you don't tell us about any relevant police charges, cautions, convictions or conditional discharges which we later identify, we may consider your non-disclosure to be a character issue.

Once you've submitted your full application, we'll contact your referee(s) and ask them to:

• make a declaration that you're capable of safe and effective practice
• confirm they're not related to you or have been previously employed by you
• explain why they think you may not be capable of safe and effective practice if they indicate they have a concern about your character or are aware cautions, convictions or determinations you have been subject to.

You can see when they've replied to us on NMC Online.

English language requirements

You'll need to provide evidence that you have the necessary knowledge of English.

Professional indemnity

You'll need to confirm that you hold, or will hold when you begin practising, an appropriate professional indemnity arrangement.

Scope of practice

We’ll also ask you to tell us your scope of practise and provide details of your work setting and employer in England if you know this.

Timeframe for submitting information

You’ll have six months from the point we ask you to submit your full application to ensure that we receive all the information we ask for, including verification from your referees (like your medical practitioner), otherwise we'll close your application.

Pay registration fee

When you're ready to submit your application, you'll need to pay the £153 registration fee.

This fee will be refunded if:

• you withdraw your application before we can complete your registration,
• we close your application because you haven’t provided all the necessary information within six months
• your application is unsuccessful because we determine that you don’t meet our registration requirements. 

Verifying your documents

As we’ll be asking you to upload some scanned documents as part of your application we’ll need to see the original documents at a face-to-face verification check.

We recommend you have these documents ready to present at your OSCE, so we can check their authenticity at the same time you take the test. You’ll then also have them ready to upload to your application once you’ve passed the test of competence.

It’s okay if you don’t have them in time for your OSCE, but you’ll need to return to the OSCE centre or our London office at a later stage to have your verification check before we register you.

When we might need more information

We may need to ask you for more information if any of the details you provide are unclear or appear incomplete, or if you or your referee(s) provide conflicting information.

We may also ask you for further information if you:

• indicate you have a health condition and/or disability that you’re not managing.
• declare you have received any criminal cautions, convictions or determinations relating to a fitness to practice impairment we may need more information.

You’ll have an opportunity to provide additional information regarding any of the above with your application, so we recommend you provide as much information as possible to begin with to help us assess your application more quickly.

If we need to ask for more information at any point we will contact you by email.

What happens next 

Once we've received all your supporting information, we'll aim to assess your application with 35 calendar days.

We’ll then contact you by email to let you know the outcome and your next steps.