When an application for registration is refused by the Assistant Registrar, in some circumstances, it is possible to appeal that decision. If you decide to appeal, it will be reviewed by an independent panel
Making an appeal
Once the Assistant Registrar has reviewed and made a decision on your application, you’ll receive a decision letter within 5 days of the decision being made.
If your application is refused by the Assistant Registrar, you’ll receive the following information from your case officer:
- A decision letter - This will explain why your application has been refused. It will provide you with 28 days to appeal, and give you a specific date by which you must send your appeal to us.
- Guidance on how to appeal - So we can accept your appeal it must meet certain criteria, in order for it to be valid, and these requirements are set in our legislation. This guidance gives you all the information you need to make a valid appeal.
- Appeal pro forma - To help you make a valid appeal, we have put together a template for you to use. Using this is the simplest way to make sure you submit a valid appeal
Appeal resolutions
Sometimes appeals can be resolved before a hearing takes place. If you provide new information with or after your Notice of Appeal, this will be considered and we’ll assess whether it might change our position about your appeal.
We’ll look at the reasons given by the Assistant Registrar when they made their decision against your new information. If your new information could make a difference to the original decision, we’ll refer the case to the Assistant Registrar for them to consider it. If the Assistant Registrar decides that the new information sufficiently addresses their original concerns and now satisfies them that you’re capable of safe and effective practice, they can decide that they no longer wish to defend your appeal. This is called ‘conceding’ the appeal.
When a decision is taken by the Assistant Registrar to concede your appeal, you’ll be notified of this and given options on what to do next. In some instances, this would mean that your case could be resolved without it being considered by a Registration Appeal Panel, but not always.
The appeal process
Once you have submitted a valid appeal, we’ll acknowledge this within 5 working days. We’ll write to let you know who your case officer is and give you a bit more information about the process.
We try to list an appeal for a hearing within 3 to 6 months from receiving the Notice of appeal. We try to list our appeals as quickly as we can, but this can depend on a number of factors such as any additional information we may need to obtain, the availability of a hearing panel, and your availability.
