ICAEW CPD Requirements 2026

ICAEW members complete between 20 and 40 hours of CPD each year, a set proportion of which must be verifiable, plus at least one hour of ethics training. The figure depends on which of six CPD categories your role falls into. This article covers the categories, the hours, what counts as verifiable, the records you keep, and what happens when the Quality Assurance Department checks.

1. ICAEW CPD Requirements at a Glance

Each row above is a requirement, not a recommendation. Anywhere a point is guidance rather than an obligation, this article flags it.

2. Who Must Comply with ICAEW's CPD Requirements

The regulations reach past membership. They apply to members, to relevant persons, and to firms:

• Members: of ICAEW who are not exempt.
• Regulated individuals: who aren't ICAEW members but are authorised or licensed by ICAEW, responsible individuals signing statutory audit reports, key audit partners signing local public audit reports, insolvency practitioners, probate authorised individuals, and licensed practitioners under the Licensed Practice Scheme.
• Reciprocal members: who gained membership under a reciprocal membership agreement, and reciprocal RIs and KAPs.
• ICAEW member firms and other firms: which carry their own obligations rather than simply monitoring their people.

Firms must make sure their members and relevant persons meet at least the verifiable hours minimum for the work done for the firm, keep records of those hours, and produce them to QAD on request. ICAEW's guidance for firms sets out how those checks are communicated. The firm's duty doesn't reduce the individual's own responsibility, which the regulations state directly.

Members based outside the UK use their judgment about whether they hold an equivalent role, by reference to the relevant national laws and regulations.

3. How Many Hours You Need, and How They're Counted

At the start of each CPD year you identify the CPD category that best fits the accountancy work or services you're carrying out and what you can reasonably foresee carrying out for the rest of that year. The category sets both numbers:

Category 3 is the default. You move up only if your work appears in the schedule for categories 1 or 2.

Practice, category 1

Captures the highest public-interest work: acting as a responsible individual or engagement quality reviewer on public interest entity audits, spending 30% or more of professional time on those audits, key audit partners and EQRs on major local audits, engagement partners on central government department audits, signing CASS audit or assurance reports, insolvency practitioners authorised to take appointments, and those providing tax services to large, listed or international companies and groups, or to high net worth individuals.

Practice, category 2

Covers RIs and EQRs on large company audits, probate work, Designated Professional Body investment business and consumer credit licensed activities, non-reserved legal services, corporate finance advice, forensic accounting at 30% or more of professional time, and tax services that go beyond simple self-assessment returns, VAT compliance and payroll administration.

Outside practice, category 1

Takes in board members, CFOs, finance directors, other chief or head roles and audit committee members at public interest entities, accounting officers at public sector bodies, local authority statutory officers, chief executives and finance leads at charities with incoming resources above £100m or gross assets above £1bn, paid trustees of large pension funds, and those holding a senior management function under the FCA Senior Managers Regime.

Outside practice, category 2

Picks up financial controllers and financial reporting managers at PIEs, board and finance leadership at large companies, trustees of pension funds that aren't large pension funds, finance leadership at charities that aren't large charities, and those under the FCA Certification Regime.

Change roles mid-year and the requirement doesn't move with you. You still comply with the category that applied at the start of the CPD year, while reflecting on whether the new role calls for more than that minimum.

4. The CPD Year and Part-Year Requirements

The CPD year runs 1 November to 31 October. Not the calendar year, and not the tax year.

Part years are handled pro rata:

5. Verifiable Hours and the Ethics Requirement

Verifiable doesn't mean formal. It means evidenced. ICAEW's test is that evidence of completion must be objective, meaning fact-based rather than based on personal perspectives; corroborated, meaning it can be confirmed as accurate by an independent source; and retained, in a format that can go into your CPD record. Only one form of evidence is needed per verifiable activity, and where possible it should show the time taken.

Relevant and verifiable CPD is defined in the regulations as any activity meeting a specific learning outcome you've identified as necessary to stay up to date and competent in your professional role, and which can be evidenced. Two tests, both of which have to hold.

Hours above the verifiable minimum can be non-verifiable. Relevance still applies to every hour you count.

The ethics requirement is one hour, every CPD year, for everyone in scope regardless of category. It's satisfied either by completing ICAEW's ethics module for members and relevant persons, or by alternative ethics training meeting specified learning outcomes aligned with the ICAEW Code of Ethics. The hour isn't an addition to your total: verifiable hours from the ethics course count towards your overall verifiable requirement.

Members and relevant persons working or acting without reward in senior executive or financial positions at charities, or as charity trustees, take a different route: ICAEW's free Charity Trustees Essentials training, or training with similar learning outcomes covering developments affecting trustee work.

6. What Counts as Eligible CPD

CPD isn't restricted to technical accounting or finance. Developing communication, leadership and change management skills counts as professional development too, provided your record shows how the activity is relevant to your role and met your learning needs.

ICAEW's verifiability guidance gives the activities and the evidence that supports them:

What doesn't count

• Learning you can't tie to an identified learning outcome for your role. That fails the relevance test and isn't CPD at all, whatever evidence you hold.
• Technical reading you can't evidence. It counts within your total as non-verifiable, never toward the verifiable minimum.
• Podcasts and videos consumed with no proof of engagement, on the same basis.
• Self-asserted records. Evidence confirmed only by you isn't corroborated.

7. Online Learning, Self-Study, Webinars and On-Demand Education

ICAEW doesn't approve providers or pre-approve courses, and the regulations set no restriction on where learning comes from or what format it takes. Verifiable CPD is explicitly not limited to structured courses. An online course, a webinar and a recorded session all sit in the same place as a conference: they're verifiable when independent evidence of completion exists, and non-verifiable when it doesn't.

For structured online learning, the evidence question usually resolves at the end of the session. A certificate naming you and the activity is corroborated by the provider, objective on its face, and retainable in your record.

The overarching requirement is that the learning meets a specific learning outcome you identified as necessary to remain up to date and competent in your role, and that you can evidence it. Hours count toward your verifiable minimum when the evidence is objective, corroborated and retained, and your record has to show why the activity was relevant and how it met your needs. ICAEW assesses CPD one member and one activity at a time, against the category you identified at the start of the year. In ICAEW's terms, structured online self-study with a certificate of completion sits in the category of relevant and verifiable CPD.

EverCPE.com provides online self-study learning for accountants that may help you fulfil your CPD requirements, with one exception: we don't cover the ethics component - ICAEW makes ethics training available to members directly on its website at no cost.

EverCPE.com is interactive, structured self-study rather than passive reading. Each learning session comes with:

• Content shaped around the exact accounting and auditing questions you have, instead of generic off-the-shelf courses
• Substantive material organised around clear learning objectives
• Knowledge checks with feedback as you go, so you fix any misunderstanding while you work through the learning session
• Scored multiple-choice questions that check whether you understand the material
• A certificate of completion once you complete the learning session, naming you, the session and the hours
• A full downloadable handout covering the session, its learning objectives, and its content

In short, EverCPE.com leaves you with documentation and evidence of the learning you completed.

8. Records, Reporting, Declarations and Monitoring

There's no prescribed format for a CPD record. ICAEW publishes an example and offers an online record, and its AddCPD tool verifies engagement with articles, videos and podcasts on icaew.com and logs them. Using either is optional.

What isn't optional:

• Retaining evidence of your relevant and verifiable hours for at least three years from the end of each CPD year.
• Supplying that evidence promptly to QAD on request, together with a written summary of your reflection on your development needs.
• Renewing your membership, licence or registration, which the regulations treat as your confirmation that you've complied.

QAD carries out monitoring checks on individuals and on firms. A member found non-compliant is required to give an undertaking to remedy the failure during the CPD year in which it's detected, on top of that year's own minimum, and to tell their firm or employer about the breach. The findings that trigger this are specific:

Fail to give the undertaking within 14 days without reasonable excuse, or object to giving it, and the matter goes to the Practice Assurance Committee, which reviews QAD's report alongside your written representations. The Committee either requests the undertaking itself within 14 days, or decides no further action is needed. Refusal after that point goes to the Conduct Department under the Disciplinary Bye-laws. So does failure to honour an undertaking already given, and so does a second failure to comply with regulation 8 within five CPD years.

Firms face a parallel process, with undertakings to identify and remediate non-compliance among their people, and referral to the Conduct Department for repeat failures or for not producing records on request.

9. Exemptions, Reduced Requirements and Special Circumstances

Exemption turns on what you do during the CPD year, not on age or status.

• Full exemption: applies where, during the CPD year, you neither carry out any accountancy or finance work nor provide any accountancy, finance or non-reserved legal services, whether for reward or not, and don't act as a trustee, as a director of a body corporate, or in any other capacity carrying an equivalent level of legal or financial responsibility. Both limbs have to be satisfied.
• Partial exemption: applies where you only carry out that work without reward, and the work doesn't involve a senior financial or executive role at a charity or acting as a charity trustee. The obligation then reduces to reflecting on the nature of the work and your development needs, and undertaking any training those needs call for.
• Reciprocal members: are exempt where they've satisfied the CPD requirements of their reciprocal membership body. That exemption doesn't extend to reciprocal RIs and KAPs, who are required by the Audit Regulations to comply with ICAEW's CPD Regulations instead.
• Unexpected absence: from work during a CPD year attracts a dispensation from full compliance with regulation 8.

Coming out of an exemption mid-year brings you back in on a pro rata basis, as set out earlier.

10. Official ICAEW Sources and Member Responsibility

This article sets out ICAEW's published rules as at the research date in the verification log below. It doesn't replace the CPD Regulations, ICAEW's own guidance, or advice about your situation.

Research verified: 23 September 2026, against the ICAEW Continuing Professional Development Regulations effective from 1 November 2023 and ICAEW's supporting guidance as published at that date.

Disclaimer: CPD requirements can depend on individual membership status, professional circumstances, jurisdiction and other factors. Requirements may also change over time. Members are responsible for confirming their current CPD obligations directly with ICAEW and, where applicable, their local jurisdiction, employer, regulator or other relevant authority. EverCPE.com does not guarantee that completion of any particular course will satisfy a member's individual CPD requirements.