Regulated Professions Register will provide information for authorities, professional users and policymakers

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The government is developing a national database of regulated professions and the award of professional certifications; the creation of the new platform comes after authorities lost access to an equivalent European system following the UK’s exit from the EU.

The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy is leading the development of the Regulated Professions Register. 

According to commercial documents, the service will provide users – including business, individuals, regulators, government agencies and other public authorities – with a comprehensive register of all regulated professions in the UK, as well as records of decisions made on professional certifications for people and organisations. 

The platform will “collect and analyse data on recognition decisions by regulatory authorities captured by [the] year the recognition decision was granted, and the applicants’ qualification origin”, BEIS said. The platform will provide the ability for this information to be entered by the UK Centre for Professional Qualifications and by individual regulatory bodies.

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Individuals or companies that wish to practise in a regulated profession will be able to find out whether they are adequately certified to do so and find pertinent information on “on professional qualification requirements and regulatory authority information” for their industry.

Policy advisers and analysts, meanwhile, will be able to use the database “to access, download and filter data from the register so that I can conduct analysis and create reports”.

Once the register is up and running, it will replace the Regulated Professions Database (RPD) operated by the European Commission. UK authorities lost access to this system following the completion of the Brexit transition period at the start of 2021.

The RPR development project is currently moving from the alpha phase into beta development; over the coming months BEIS – supported by supplier dxw – will develop a private beta version of the tool, before it goes live in the spring next year.

A contract, running from 1 November to 15 May and worth £466,610, has been awarded to dxw.

“The UK’s new Regulated Professions Register needs to be scalable, efficient and secure,” the contract notice said. “It will display information on regulated professions to support the recognition of professional qualifications of regulated professions. The priority outcome is to maintain and build on the key functionalities currently provided by the RPD.”

It added: “The service needs to be easily accessible for those inputting data into the database – for example regulators, government officials and the UK Centre for Professional Qualifications – and to display information in a clear and accessible way for those seeking information on UK and overseas regulated professions. It needs to be built in a way to allow the collection of relevant data to inform policy decisions and to monitor the effectiveness of government policies.