Stage B - assessment

Timescale: 10-12 weeks for a straightforward assessment

Stage B is when our assessors scrutinise some of the recent casework you have done. Your application will move on to Stage C once they have made their recommendation whether to grant registration.

We will send a copy of your whole application to the lead assessor for your specialty. They will then allocate your application to a specialty assessor from their team. The specialty assessor will ask you for the details of cases selected from your log to examine.

The style of the assessment varies between specialties. You may need to provide details of 2 cases or as many as 6. You may need to write an account of your contribution to each case or produce an anonymised copy of the whole case file. The How to Apply guide in the application pack will indicate the requirements for your specialty.

Your case work should show that you know and understand how the law applies to your field of practice. This includes legislation about forensic evidence and human rights, as well as more general areas such as health and safety. We also expect you to know what will happen if one of your cases comes to court.

Once you have sent the specialty assessor the case details, they will assess them against the essential elements for that specialty. They will then make their recommendation to the lead assessor and send all the documentation to them. Because other factors can affect registration, your specialty assessor cannot confirm whether you will be registered.

The lead assessor will review the assessment either as an informal check or as a formal internal verification . This ensures that the specialty assessor has come to a fair, consistent and reasonable conclusion. Lead assessors carry out internal verifications on every tenth assessment they receive from each specialty assessor. The lead assessor will then endorse the recommendation of the specialty assessor and return all the information to our office.

On rare occasions the specialty assessor may not recommend registration based on the casework they have seen. In this case the lead assessor will send the application to another specialty assessor in their team. They will carry out a second full assessment based on a new selection of casework. The lead assessor will not pass on the comments of the first specialty assessor to the second.

Once the lead assessor has received the second specialty assessor's recommendation, they will formally verify both assessments. If they have recommended registration, the lead assessor will adjudicate between the two assessments. If the second agrees with the decision of the first, the lead assessor will endorse the assessments and return all the documentation to the office.