Updated: NMC reveals proposed new registration fee

The Nursing and Midwifery Council has proposed increasing its registration fee from £120 to £143 per year.

The 17% rise has been outlined in a 12-week public consultation which has gone live today.

Nurses, midwives and nursing associates have been encouraged to share their views before the NMC Council makes its decisions in the spring of 2026.

Under the proposals, nurses, midwives and nursing associates would pay an extra £1.92 per month, equivalent to £23 a year. Those paying quarterly would pay an additional £5.75 every three months.

For registrants who pay basic rate tax and claim tax relief, the annual fee would effectively increase to £114.40 – around £1.53 more per month.

The regulator explained the rise was needed to maintain essential regulatory services after a decade-long fee freeze and to support ongoing improvements at the NMC.

It claimed that if it had increased the annual registration fee in line with inflation over the last decade, it would now stand at £166.

‘We have, effectively, imposed on ourselves a cut in fee income in real terms of more than 28% over that period,’ the NMC explained in its most recent council papers.

The regulator said this would be ‘equivalent to foregoing’ around £180m in income since 2015 to March 2026.

Registration fees account for ‘around 97%’ of the NMC’s income, it said, and enable the regulator to ‘protect the public, maintain confidence in the professions and uphold standards’.

Paul Rees, NMC chief executive and registrar, said the fee freeze was ‘well-intentioned’ but has had a ‘profound impact’ on the NMC’s finances.

He reiterated that the increased funding would be used to pay for ‘the ongoing transformation of the NMC’, including its work to improve fitness to practise timeliness, ‘fix’ its culture and improve education and standards.

‘We encourage everyone to share their thoughts on the proposed fee changes through the consultation – whether you are a nurse, midwife or nursing associate on our Register, a student, a member of the public or someone involved in the wider health and social care sector.’

‘Using up reserves’ 

The regulator said it was now ‘using up reserves’ for its day-to-day running costs. In 2023–24, it spent £1.1m more than it brought in through income.

While keeping the fee flat, the NMC said its responsibilities have ‘increased significantly’ and that the ‘complexity of its work has also grown’.

The NMC now regulates a larger number of nursing and midwifery professionals than ever – with the register having grown from 686,782 in 2015 to 853,707 in 2025.

The NMC has been introducing a series of cultural changes following a review into the regulator by Nazir Afzal and Rise Associates which last year exposed a ‘dangerously toxic culture’ in which bullying, racism and burnout are putting nurses and the public at risk.

The decision to consult on the rise was approved in an NMC Council meeting last month, with proposals first being revealed by Nursing in Practice.

Also last month, the NMC announced its plans to cut almost 150 jobs at the regulator as part of cost-saving measures.

In a closed-door discussion in June the NMC endorsed a ‘flat rate increase to the annual registration fee and all other fees’.

Also discussed, according to NMC minutes, were plans to include in the consultation document a ‘preference’ for ‘smaller, more regular fee increases’ in the future.

The union Unison has warned that nurses would be ‘hit hard’ by the proposed rise and said nurses could ‘question their confidence’ in the regulator.