The NMC is consulting on a new Code

This post said in July that the NMC's Code and revalidation consultation would run from September to December 2026. That plan has since moved. The regulator told the nursing press in September that it needed more time to take in the feedback it had already gathered, so the Code consultation now opens by the end of November 2026 rather than in September, and the revalidation consultation has been separated from it altogether and pushed back by at least six months. We said at the bottom of the original post that we would say so plainly if the dates moved. Here it is, and the rest of this post is rewritten to match.

A consultation is a question rather than a change, and that much has not moved. So the Code your exam is written against is the Code that exists today, whatever month the consultation eventually opens in. Part B asks you about accountability, consent, confidentiality, delegation, raising concerns and record keeping, and the professional values station in the OSCE is marked against the same document. None of that moves while a consultation is still being drafted, and a delayed consultation moves it even less. If you sit in the next twelve months you will sit against the current Code, which is free to read on the NMC's site and worth doing once in full rather than only through other people's summaries of it.

What the NMC wants to strengthen has not changed

The substance of what is being proposed is the same as it was in July, only the timing moved. The proposals still cover anti-discrimination, including anti-racism, bias and stigma. They still cover public protection, safeguarding and access to patient records. They still cover working cultures and the wellbeing of staff, professional accountability when there is an inquiry, and how registrants behave away from work. And they still cover two things that barely existed as questions when the current Code was written, the safe use of digital technology and artificial intelligence, and the profession's part in public health and health inequalities.

Revalidation is now its own, slower timeline

Revalidation is what you do every three years once you are on the register, and splitting its consultation away from the Code's was a deliberate choice rather than a delay by accident: the NMC says it wants time to weigh stakeholder feedback and whatever independent inquiries recommend before it puts proposals to registrants. The proposals themselves are still the practical ones described before, a larger role for your confirmer and for the person you have your reflective discussion with, automatic twelve week extensions where there is a good reason for one, and roughly double the number of registrants picked out for verification. None of it is something you sit an exam on, so if you are reading this before your CBT, file it under what happens after you arrive, later than it looked in July.

The NMC's July announcement also said the modernised Code and revalidation process would come into effect in October 2027. Nobody has told us that date moved, and splitting the two consultations apart may or may not change it depending on which one it was timed against, so treat October 2027 as the last figure the NMC gave rather than a confirmed one, and we will correct it the moment the NMC says otherwise. Anyone can respond to an NMC consultation once it opens, including somebody who is not on the register yet, and if the Code is going to govern your working life for the next thirty years your view of it is worth more than you probably think.

Nothing on this site changes while any of this is still a proposal, and we will say so plainly if that stops being true. Our accountability and professional values questions are written against the Code as it stands, and if a new one is published we will go through every one of them again.