The first post-CCT appraisal generates anxiety wildly out of proportion to what it is: a supportive, structured conversation about your first year of independent practice, built on evidence you mostly already have. It typically falls within about a year of starting independent work, timed by your designated body's cycle, and the doctors who find it easy share one behaviour, continuous light evidence-gathering, while the doctors who find it miserable share its absence. Here is what actually counts, which toolkit to run it through, what does not count, and the efficient version of preparation.
The shape of what's required
Appraisal for revalidation collects reflection on six types of supporting information across the five-year cycle: continuing professional development; quality improvement activity; significant events; feedback from patients; feedback from colleagues; and complaints and compliments. Not all six are due every year, patient and colleague feedback, for instance, run on cycle timelines your appraisal toolkit will track, and the first appraisal is substantially about establishing your scope of practice, your professional development plan, and the habit of reflection. The regulator's consistent steer: quality over quantity, a proportionate sample reflected on meaningfully, not an archive.
Choosing your first appraisal toolkit
This is the one decision worth making deliberately before evidence starts accumulating, because switching mid-cycle is more disruptive than choosing carefully at the start. Newly qualified pricing changes the calculation considerably compared with what an established GP pays. FourteenFish offers its appraisal toolkit free for five years to eligible RCGP members who obtained CCT from 2021 onwards, which for most new consultants and GPs makes it effectively costless in year one, provided RCGP membership is maintained. Agilio Clarity offers a specifically discounted rate, currently around £30 plus VAT, for doctors qualified within the previous five years, a meaningful reduction from its standard tiers. GP Tools takes a different approach entirely, offering its first twelve months free to any new user regardless of RCGP membership status, reverting to its standard £39.99 annual price thereafter, which makes it worth comparing directly against the FourteenFish First5 offer if you are not, or do not plan to remain, an RCGP member.
A simple decision guide: if you are an RCGP member with CCT from 2021 onwards, FourteenFish's free offer is difficult to beat on price alone, and it is also the platform most appraisers already know well. If you are not an RCGP member and do not plan to join solely for this discount, GP Tools' first free year removes the membership dependency entirely. If your practice or PCN already runs Agilio Clarity for other staff, the newly qualified rate may still be worth taking specifically to stay within a system your organisation already supports, even where FourteenFish would be free. And whichever you choose, confirm your actual designated body and appraiser's preference first, since starting your first cycle on a platform your appraiser does not recognise adds friction to exactly the meeting you want to go smoothly.
What counts, category by category
CPD: relevant learning across your whole scope with brief reflection, and this is where assessed learning shines, records showing what you did not know, how it was corrected against current guidance, and that it stayed corrected outclass a folder of certificates; the full evidence hierarchy is at /blog/certificates-vs-reflections-vs-assessment-records-appraisal. QIA: in year one, modest is fine, a small audit, a prescribing review, participation in the practice's improvement work, reflected on honestly. Significant events: anything meeting your organisation's threshold, handled through its processes, with your learning noted; none is a fine answer if true. Feedback and complaints/compliments: per the cycle your toolkit tracks; log compliments as they happen, they evaporate otherwise. Scope of practice: list everything you actually do, sessions, OOH, any teaching or extended roles, because CPD relevance is judged against it. PDP: three to five real objectives for the coming year, specific enough to evidence next time.
What not to upload
Anything patient-identifiable, anywhere, ever, names, dates of birth, identifiable combinations, screenshots with details; anonymise properly or leave it out. Volume for its own sake: two hundred tracked page-views bury the eight entries that matter, and current guidance explicitly favours selection, the case against exhaustive logging is at /blog/why-doctors-should-not-log-every-learning-activity. And nothing you have not actually read or reflected on; appraisers ask about what you upload, and the conversation goes better when everything present is genuinely yours.
Preparing efficiently: the evening version
If evidence has accumulated through the year, preparation is curation: pick a proportionate sample, eight to fifteen entries spanning your scope, ensure each carries a sentence or three of reflection, check the feedback-cycle items your toolkit flags, draft the PDP, and write short answers to the standard reflective prompts. Two to three hours, honestly. If evidence has not accumulated, the reconstruction version takes days and reads like it, which is the entire argument for the continuous approach below.
Continuous evidence, not appraisal-month panic
The system that makes every future appraisal an evening: capture learning at the moment it happens. The real clinical question asked and answered with its source; the assessed session with its score, the specific gap and the retest showing correction held; the two-minute reflection while the details exist; teaching given, compliments received, filed same-day. My CPD automates the assessed spine of this, sessions, Tutor-diagnosed corrections, spaced retests, packaged with your own reflection as appraisal-ready records, and the export drops into FourteenFish, Clarity, GP Tools or BMJ Portfolio as supporting information. A year of that costs minutes a week and produces a portfolio most appraisers rarely see: evidence of learning, not just activity.
Frequently asked questions
Does appraisal still happen if I'm between jobs or locuming irregularly?
Yes; revalidation runs on your registration, not your employment, and your designated body arrangements follow your work pattern. Un- and underemployed GPs still appraise, which is one more reason the continuous, portable evidence habit matters: /blog/newly-qualified-gp-cant-find-job-practical-guide.
How much CPD is "enough" in year one?
There is no national credit number; the standard is relevant learning across your scope, reflected on. A dozen meaningful entries with a couple demonstrating assessed, retained learning is a strong first-year showing.
What will the appraiser actually ask?
What you learned, what changed, and what next, about a handful of entries you choose to foreground. Prepare those few deeply rather than everything thinly.
Does locum work make the first appraisal harder?
Only logistically: the evidence standard is identical, but nobody hands locums teaching sessions or practice meetings, so the continuous capture habit matters more, not less. A locum with a running record of cases, questions closed and assessed learning walks into appraisal better prepared than most salaried peers.
Which toolkit should a locum choose for their first appraisal specifically?
The same newly-qualified pricing logic applies, and portability matters more for a locum than for a salaried GP tied to one practice, so confirm before committing that whichever toolkit you choose lets you export your full history cleanly if you later need to change designated body or platform.