When an application for registration is refused by the Assistant Registrar, in some circumstances, it’s possible to appeal that decision. If you decide to appeal, it’ll be reviewed by an independent panel called a ‘Registration Appeal Panel’.
Making an appeal
Once the Assistant Registrar has considered and made a decision on your application, you’ll usually receive your decision letter within five days of the decision being made.
If your application is refused by the Assistant Registrar, you’ll receive the following information:
- A decision letter - This’ll explain why your application has been refused. In the letter, we’ll let you know that you’ll have 28 days to appeal the Assistant Registrar’s decision and give you a specific date by when you must send your notice of 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’. The requirement for this criteria is set in our legislation. This guidance document gives you all the information that you’ll need to make a valid appeal.
- Appeal proforma - To help you make a ‘valid’ appeal, we’ve put together a proforma (template) for you to use. Using this proforma is the simplest way to make sure you provide a notice of appeal that’s valid.
Appeal resolutions
Sometimes appeals can be resolved before a hearing takes place. If you provide new information with your notice of appeal, or after you've submitted it, we’ll carefully consider it.
We’ll look at the reasons given by the Assistant Registrar when they made their original decision. We’ll then consider whether your new information may result in a different decision if the Assistant Registrar was reviewing it anew. If we think it may, we’ll send it 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.
If 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 may mean that your appeal could be conceded without it being considered by a Registration Appeal Panel, but not always.
The appeal process
Once you’ve submitted a valid notice of appeal, we’ll acknowledge it within five working days. When we acknowledge your notice of appeal, we’ll let you know who your case officer is and give you more information about the process.
We try to list 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. Typically, we try to list an appeal within three to six months from receiving the Notice of appeal.
