NMC budget and registration fees to be discussed in next council meet

The Nursing and Midwifery Council’s (NMC’s) annual budget plans make ‘no assumptions’ as to a registration fee increase given the issue is still under consideration, latest council papers have said.

Recommendations are due to be made at the regulator’s council meeting next week that the annual registration fee for professionals remain at the current level of £120 for the purpose of setting its annual budget.

However, it has been acknowledged that the regulator is still considering responses from a public consultation held in November and a decision to raise the fees could still be made this spring and implemented during 2026/27.

In the regulator’s council meeting papers published today (19 March), it sets out that council will be asked to ‘approve that the annual registration fee for all professionals on our register should remain at the current level of £120 for 2026-2027 for the purpose of setting the budget at this stage’.

‘Following completion of council’s review of the outcome of the consultation on a fee rise, council is due to make a decision in spring 2026 which could lead to a change in the fee during 2026-2027,’ the papers said.

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The NMC warned last year that its financial reserves will fall to ‘unsafe levels’ by the summer of 2027 if registration fees are not increased.

Papers prepared for the council meeting to be held on 25 March said its proposed budget for 2026/27 ‘makes no assumption as to a fee increase since, whilst our consultation closed on 26 January 2026, we are still considering the responses we received to it’.

‘As a result, our proposed budget shows a further significant deficit,’ the papers added.

The NMC expects its reserves to reduce from a forecast £46m at the end of this month to ‘at least £15m’ at the end of March 2027, without a fee increase.

In the public consultation, which ran for 12 weeks from November to January, the NMC proposed to raise the fee from £120 to £143 per year.

Several reasons were offered as to why the reserves could fall over the next year including the investment in projects such as improving the quality of fitness to practise (FtP) processes as well as continuing inflationary pressures.

It adds that fees have not been raised for over 10 years and, if they had risen in line with inflation, the fee would now be more than £166 and it ‘would have benefitted from additional income of some £180m in the 10 years up to the end of March 2026’.

The regulator warned that not increasing the fee has caused its income to decline by over 28% in real terms at a time when its work has ‘increased in volume and complexity’.

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Issues were also raised in the council papers about the 2026/27 budget being ‘slightly below’ what was expected due to ‘less than expected number of applications from overseas professionals to the register’.

Data from the NMC in December 2025 showed an almost 50% drop in the number of international professionals joining the register compared to the same six-month period last year.

Meanwhile new government statistics published in the NHS Pay Review Body (PRB) annual report last month showed that the number of Health and Care Worker visas granted for nurses in the first quarter of 2025 was ‘76% lower’ than the same quarter in 2024.

NHS England told writers of the report that it had ‘stopped incentivising’ NHS trusts to recruit internationally, adding that ‘the focus was on domestic workforce supply’.

Despite this, the NMC has seen an increase in the overall number of professionals joining the registering with an increase from 689,738 in September 2017 to 841,367 in September 2024 and 860,801 in September 2025.

However, the regulator states there is still ‘uncertainties around the numbers of professionals who may be considering leaving the register or joining it’ meaning the income budget for the coming year ‘contains a degree of uncertainty.’

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The proposed registration fee has not been broadly welcomed, with union Unison warning that nurses would be ‘hit hard’.

Many nurses took to social media to express their concern and disappointment over the fee proposals when they were first announced last year.

One Nursing in Practice reader commented on Facebook: ‘No incentives to stay in the profession more. They are making it so difficult for nurses. Low pay and now increased fees! Disgusting. No wonder so many are or thinking about leaving.’