Does supervision count towards your CPD hours?

This is one of the most commonly misunderstood points in UK therapy record-keeping, and the answer isn't the same for everyone. Whether your clinical supervision counts towards your CPD hours depends entirely on which professional body you're registered with — and if you assume wrongly, you can reach the end of your CPD year believing you're compliant when you're roughly a third short.

BACP: supervision does not count

BACP are unambiguous about this. Their guide to CPD states that supervision is a separate Register requirement and should not be submitted as CPD. So if BACP normally expect at least 30 hours of CPD a year, that means 30 hours of CPD plus your supervision, not 30 hours combined.

This matters practically. A therapist having an hour and a half of supervision monthly accumulates around 18 hours across a year. If you counted that towards a 30-hour target, you'd think you had only 12 hours of CPD left to find. In reality you'd still need all 30.

BACP also want the two recorded separately. At audit you submit a CPD record, a supervision record, and your indemnity insurance certificates — three distinct things.

UKCP: probably yes, but check with your college

Here the picture is genuinely murkier, and we'd rather say so than pretend otherwise. Several well-regarded training and CPD sources state that UKCP allows clinical supervision to be counted within its CPD hours, explicitly contrasting this with BACP and NCPS. That's widely repeated and may well be correct.

However, UKCP's own published CPD policy doesn't state it directly. And UKCP requirements genuinely vary: their baseline is 250 hours across a five-year reaccreditation period with normally at least 20 hours in any single year, but they note this may be higher depending on your organisational member or college.

So if you're UKCP-registered and want to count supervision, the honest advice is to confirm it with your own college rather than relying on a general answer. The safer default is to track it separately — if it turns out you can count it, you've simply done more CPD than you needed. The reverse error is the one that hurts.

BABCP and NCPS

NCPS, like BACP, treat supervision as a separate requirement rather than part of the CPD total. BABCP's approach is evidence-led rather than purely hours-based: they want supporting evidence and a reflective statement for each activity, showing how it contributed to your CBT practice specifically. Requirements can vary by registration route, so it's worth checking the one that applies to you.

The other thing people get wrong: how much supervision you need

You'll see "1.5 hours a month" quoted almost everywhere as the BACP supervision requirement. For most registered members, that figure doesn't apply.

BACP's own guide to supervision says plainly that they don't give a specific number of hours, because different members have different requirements. The 1.5 hours monthly minimum applies to accredited members, or those working towards accreditation. If you're registered but not accredited, you're expected to arrange supervision appropriate to your caseload and context, and to be able to show how it has affected your practice.

That's a more demanding standard in some ways, not a lighter one. There's no number to hit that proves you've done enough — you need to be able to justify what you arranged.

What your supervision record actually needs

If you don't use BACP's own supervision template, their guidance lists what your record must include: the date and duration of each session, the format (peer, one-to-one, group), the mode of delivery, and the work context the supervision relates to. Alongside that they want examples of how supervision has had an impact on your practice — not just that it happened.

That last part is the same principle that runs through CPD requirements generally. A list of dates satisfies nobody. What an auditor is looking for is evidence that the time changed something about how you work.

Keeping the two apart without keeping two spreadsheets

The practical difficulty is that supervision and CPD need separating for reporting while being logged in much the same way, which is exactly the sort of thing a spreadsheet handles badly. NoteSono's CPD and supervision tracking knows which body you're registered with and totals them accordingly — so a BACP member sees supervision listed separately from their 30 hours rather than quietly inflating the number.

It's part of NoteSono Pro, alongside AI-generated clinical notes, calendar and invoicing. You can create a free account and start a 7-day Pro trial when you open CPD tracking, without a card.

The short version

• BACP: supervision does not count towards CPD. Separate records for both.
• NCPS: same — supervision is a separate requirement.
• UKCP: widely reported to allow it, but confirm with your college.
• BABCP: evidence and reflection per activity; check your registration route.
• BACP supervision hours: no set number for registered members. The 1.5 hours a month figure applies to accredited members.

Requirements do change, and professional bodies update their guidance. Always check your own body's current published requirements before relying on any summary, including this one.

Free tool: our CPD hours calculator works out where you stand against your body's annual requirement. Add your activities and it counts supervision separately where your body requires that. Nothing is saved or sent anywhere.