Registered psychologists in Australia must complete at least 30 hours of continuing professional development each year between 1 December and 30 November, including a minimum of 10 hours of peer consultation. You also need a written learning plan, an activity log, a reflection on every activity, and a portfolio kept for five years.
Those numbers are easy to quote and easy to get wrong. Most compliance problems are not about doing too little professional development. They are about counting the wrong things, counting them in the wrong window, or having nothing written down when an audit notice arrives.
How many CPD hours do psychologists need each year?
Thirty hours, of which at least 10 must be peer consultation. The remaining 20 hours can be any other CPD activity relevant to your practice.
The requirement sits in the Board's Continuing professional development registration standard, with the detail in the accompanying Guidelines for continuing professional development. The guidelines resolve most of the edge cases people email Ahpra about.
If you have held general registration for less than the full 12 months, the requirement is pro rata: 2.5 hours of CPD for every full month you held general registration, and one third of that pro-rata total must be peer consultation. So a psychologist registered for six full months needs 15 hours, of which five must be peer consultation. You can spread those hours across the months or complete them all at once.
When does the psychology CPD year actually run?
From 1 December to 30 November. It is the annual registration renewal cycle, not the calendar year and not the financial year.
Two consequences follow, and both bite people:
- You cannot count CPD undertaken while you were not generally registered in Australia. If you moved from provisional to general registration partway through the year, only activities completed from the date general registration was granted count, and the pro-rata rule applies.
- You cannot count CPD completed after 30 November towards the year that just closed, even if you are renewing during the late period in December. Those hours roll into the next year instead.
If your employer, association or an overseas board runs a different cycle, you can keep using their system. You just have to show the Board's minimum was met inside the Board's window, which sometimes means extending your plan or submitting two that together cover 1 December to 30 November.
Is it CPD points or CPD hours for psychologists?
Hours. "CPD points" is a common search phrase borrowed from other professions, but the Psychology Board expresses its requirement purely in hours of activity.
A related misconception is worth clearing up: the Board does not certify or pre-approve CPD hours, and it does not tell providers how many hours their workshop is worth. Appraising an activity's quality and justifying the hours claimed is your responsibility, and you need to defend those numbers if audited. A provider's marketing claim is not a Board endorsement.
What counts as peer consultation, and who can you count it with?
Peer consultation means supervision, mentoring or consultation in one-on-one or group format, for professional development and support in the practice of psychology, with a critically reflective focus on your own practice. Case discussion is the obvious form, but the Board's definition of practice is broad, so consultation about management, administration, teaching, research, ethics, record keeping, practice systems or burnout can also count.
The counting rules are where it gets fiddly:
- Only the time focused on your practice counts as peer consultation. In a group where each member presents in turn, you count your estimated share, not the whole session.
- Time you spend advising on someone else's practice can go towards your 20 hours of general CPD if it serves your learning goals, but not towards the 10 peer consultation hours.
- Peer consultation hours should not be double counted by more than one person in the group.
- You cannot count consultation with provisional psychologists, because a provisional psychologist has not yet demonstrated the minimum competence required for general registration. If you supervise a 5+1 internship candidate, that time is not peer consultation for you.
- Time in a formal role as a supervisor for a Board-approved internship or registrar program cannot be counted towards your 10 hours either.
- You can count consultation with any other generally registered psychologist, including psychologists working through a registrar program.
Consultation with people who are not registered Australian psychologists is allowed where it advances your goals, including overseas and retired psychologists, academics, psychiatrists and other medical practitioners. The Board recommends the majority still be with psychologists, and asks you to make the link to your CPD goals explicit. A short written outline of content and relevance for each session is part of the requirement, not an optional extra, and the habits that make supervision notes useful clinically also make them audit-ready.
What CPD do you need if you hold an area of practice endorsement?
The majority of your CPD should sit inside your endorsed area. The Board sets out the split by number of endorsements:
- One endorsement: 16 hours within that area, with the other 14 in any area relevant to your practice.
- Two endorsements: 15 hours within each area.
- Three or more endorsements: 30 hours split equally between the areas.
Your peer consultation does not have to follow the same split; it can be general or area-specific. If you want those hours to count towards the area-of-practice component, they must be clearly relevant to that area. Registrars are the exception: all of a registrar's supervision must be relevant to the endorsed area and provided by the principal or secondary supervisor.
Do provisional psychologists and registrars have to do CPD?
The standard applies to all registered psychologists except those with provisional or non-practising registration. Provisional psychologists are outside it, and non-practising registration carries no CPD requirement at all, which is why the Board suggests that route for anyone seeking a full-year exemption.
Registrars sit inside the standard but generally overshoot it: a full-time registrar exceeds the minimum supervision and professional development requirements simply by meeting the registrar program requirements. Part-time registrars, and those taking a leave of absence while holding general registration, need to check they still hit 10 hours of peer consultation plus 20 hours of other CPD for the year.
What has to be in your CPD portfolio?
Five things, kept in electronic or paper form:
- A learning plan based on a skills and knowledge self-assessment, identifying areas for development and setting learning objectives. At least one goal is required; the Board's template allows for three.
- A CPD activity log.
- A peer consultation log.
- A professional development journal recording your reflection on every activity, including peer consultation.
- Evidence of CPD: certificates of attendance, receipts, tax invoices, reading lists, transcripts, published work, supervision plans and progress reports.
On the journal, the Board is explicit that there is no set word count. At audit an assessor is generally checking that reflection exists rather than reading it closely, though it matters if a claimed activity's relevance is questioned. Each entry needs a date.
Your plan can change during the year. If you revise or abandon a goal, activities already completed against it still count, provided they were relevant to your practice or goals at the time.
You must keep the portfolio for five years, which sits alongside the other long retention obligations in private practice, including clinical record retention.
What happens in an Ahpra CPD audit?
Ahpra runs random audits of samples of practitioners periodically through the year, after renewal rather than during it. You are notified by an audit notice in the mail and must submit your portfolio within 28 days. The notice sets out what is being audited and includes a checklist.
Two details are worth planning for. You can be audited on more than one registration standard at once, so a CPD audit may arrive alongside a request for evidence of professional indemnity insurance and recency of practice. And you can be audited for more than one year at a time. The Board or a disciplinary panel may also ask to see your portfolio while investigating a notification. More detail sits on the Board's audit page.
What if you cannot meet the requirement this year?
Apply in writing before your registration expires. The Board may grant a full or partial exemption or variation in exceptional circumstances resulting in substantial absence from practice, which can include serious illness, injury, bereavement, parental leave or carer's leave. Your submission needs to state the nature of the circumstance and the period it applied to.
Expect a partial exemption rather than a full one. The Board's position is that if you could practise at all during the year, you could do at least some CPD.
If you renew without meeting the requirement and without an exemption, you explain why at renewal. The Board looks first at remedial action, and may renew with conditions requiring additional CPD, further education, supervised practice, or the national psychology exam. Conditions appear on the public register. In more serious cases the Board may refuse renewal or take disciplinary action.
How do you keep CPD records without it becoming another admin job?
The requirement is not really 30 hours of learning. It is 30 hours plus a year-round paper trail, and the paper trail is what fails. People attend the workshop, have the supervision session, write nothing down, then reconstruct 12 months of reflection in the week before renewal.
What works is logging at the point of the activity: a date, hours, whether it was peer consultation or general CPD, and two or three sentences of reflection tied to a goal. PractaLuma is AI-native practice management software for Australian mental-health practices, and the same discipline that keeps clinical documentation current keeps a CPD portfolio audit-ready, especially where supervision already happens inside the systems you run your practice on. If you are setting up a private practice, building the CPD log into your first-year routine removes a recurring risk.
Frequently asked questions
Do I submit my CPD portfolio when I renew my registration? No. At renewal you simply declare whether you have met the requirements. The portfolio is only submitted if you are later selected for an audit.
Can I count postgraduate study or writing towards CPD? Yes, where it contributes to your CPD goals. The Board recognises any activity that directly contributes to those goals, and lists academic transcripts, assignments, theses, research reports and published articles among acceptable evidence.
Does active CPD have to make up a set proportion of my hours? No. Active CPD, meaning activities that test and reinforce learning, is recommended but optional for general registration. The exception is registrars, who must meet the active CPD requirements of their registrar program.
Can I use my professional association's CPD log instead of the Board's template? Yes, provided it captures everything the standard requires and lets an auditor see clearly that the requirements were met in the Board's 1 December to 30 November cycle.