Commentary on provisions of Act Section 8: Duty of regulator to publish information on requirements to practise
Section 8 requires regulators to publish information about the requirements they place on individuals to enter or remain in their profession. This is a new transparency duty, which aims to reduce the risk of a lack of information being a barrier to entering and practising professions for aspiring professionals.
	Subsections (1)(a) and (1)(b) require regulators to publish the information specified in subsections (2)(a) to (2)(j) on their public website. The website must be easy to use. This might be achieved by meeting Government accessibility requirements, ensuring the information is easy to find and clearly signposted to website visitors, and ensuring it is collated, where possible, under clear headings rather than found in general documents or pamphlets. It is also required to be kept up to date.
	Subsections (2)(a) to (2)(j) list the information that regulators must publish. These are a consistent requirement across all regulated professions in the UK. Within this:
Subsection (2)(a) refers to the qualifications or experience that an individual must obtain to become entitled to practise in the UK. This includes alternative, or non-examination, routes to qualification such as vocational schemes.
Subsections (2)(b) and (2)(c) refer to the application process for applying with an overseas qualification or a qualification gained in another part of the UK. Subsection 2(d) requires regulators to set out detail about the numbers of individuals applying though these processes and the outcome of the recognition decisions, as well as the qualifications or experience held by these individuals.
Subsections (2)(e) refers to any requirement for an individual to be registered, licensed or otherwise authorized in order to be entitled to practise the profession. Subsection (2)(f) refers to any other requirement required to be entitled to practise their profession.
Subsections (2)(g) and (2)(h) refer to any requirements, such as training and learning, that a professional must meet in order to continue to practise their profession. Regulators will be required to provide information as to how these requirements may be met, which could include signposts to relevant educational providers.
Subsection (2)(i) refers to the costs set by the regulators for an individual or professional to enter and / or remain in the profession, for example, registration renewal fees. This does not require a regulator to publish any other costs which the individual or professional may incur elsewhere.
Subsection (2)(j) provides a delegated power for the "appropriate national authority" to make legislation which specifies additional information for regulators to publish.
	Subsection (3) requires regulators, who do not have the kinds of entry and practice requirements set out in subsection (2), only need to publish a statement explaining they do not hold the information on their websites.
	Subsection (4) provides that, if there are multiple regulators for a profession, this duty of a regulator to publish information on how to enter or remain in the profession can be fulfilled by only one of the regulators so long as the other regulators are identified on the website of the regulator that is fulfilling this duty. This means that regulators can agree how the information publication requirement is best divided between the relevant regulators and signpost between websites.
	Subsections (5) and (6) acknowledge that a regulator carries out its regulatory functions within the part or parts of the United Kingdom it has responsibility for. Therefore, a regulator does not have to fulfil the duty to publish information on requirements to practise for regulatory functions outside of their part, or parts, of the United Kingdom.
	Subsection (7) sets out the definition of "regulatory functions" for this Section only.