14 December 2020
As the year draws to a close, we wanted to take the opportunity to give you an update before the office closes for Christmas (to see our 2020 Christmas message from the NRCPD Chair, please see: https://www.nrcpd.org.uk/NRCPD-updates.php?article=226.)
NRCPD are also delighted to announce that our programme of outreach events will be re-starting in 2021 and we have online events lined up with the Royal Association for Deaf People, Deaf Action, Manchester Deaf Centre and BID Services. There are more initiatives in the pipeline too! We are looking forward to engaging with Deaf and Hard of Hearing people across the UK, so that we can further our cause of effective national regulation.
We also announced our 2021 Fee Rates on Monday 30th November 2020. There will be no change to registrant fees for 2021, with 2020 rates applying to all registers. The exception to this will be the 'Sign Language Translator' register, as we are adjusting the registration fees for RSLTs to be the same as for the Lipspeaker, Speech to Text Reporter, Notetaker and Interpreter for Deafblind People registers. For further detail, please see: https://www.nrcpd.org.uk/NRCPD-updates.php?article=225. The new RSLT fees go into effect on 1st January 2021 and will apply to all applications received from this date. Current 2020 fee rates apply to all applications received before 31st December 2020.
In October, we let you know that the free CPD credit measure to support renewals in response to the impacts of Covid-19, will cease in December 2020. The last such CPD credit will still be for the month of December 2020. For further detail, please see: https://www.nrcpd.org.uk/NRCPD-updates.php?article=221.
To help you find the right structured CPD, both free and paid-for, we will be publishing a CPD resource page on the NRCPD website. This page will be routinely updated with more CPD providers as we find out about them. We will let you know when the page has been published. If you know of a CPD provider and would like to add them to this resource page, please let us know. The other registration support measures that we have introduced (60 day payment terms, 6 month renewal option and special arrangements for those struggling financially) will be continuing until at least 31st March 2021.
The CPD audit also took place at the end of November and we wanted to thank those who took part in the audit selection process this year. Our new CPD policy went live at the beginning of November and we hope that you like the improvements so far! If you have not renewed under the new policy yet and don't want to wait to take advantage of the additional flexibility it offers, you may 'opt-in' voluntarily. Please let us know as soon as possible if you would like to do this. The old policy will apply to you until you renew or you opt-in, whichever is sooner.
We have now concluded all the evidence gathering for the review of the NRCPD Complaints Process. We have received a tremendous amount of useful and constructive feedback from many organisations and individuals, and will be working that into a revision over the next couple of months. There will be significant improvements and we will let people know how we will consult on the new process and implementation in due course.
In the midst of all of the above, we took part in Captioning Awareness Week and have also continued to support the #WhereIsTheInterpreter campaign (we are in awe of the inspiring work that Lynn Stewart-Taylor has done in leading this campaign!) We also attended the Association of Lipspeakers' AGM in November, as well as a webinar with the Association of Lipspeakers with Additional Sign this month and we are currently on the Advisory Board for ASLI's Sign Language Interpreter and Translator Census Survey. We also excitingly now have a blog section on our website which can be found here: https://www.nrcpd.org.uk/NRCPD-news.
And finally, on matters of regulation, we are aware that some agencies continue to operate from time to time by providing unregistered language service professionals for assignments: we are strongly against this practice which we believe is unsafe. Whilst we unfortunately do not formally regulate agencies, if you become aware of any instances of this happening, we would encourage you to tell NRCPD and we will write to these agencies. With many thanks for your continued support this year. We wish you a very happy, peaceful and safe Christmas.
NRCPD.
When you renew or upgrade your registration, your invoice will be sent to you via email immediately. The invoice will also appear within your portal account and you can pay directly from there by credit or debit card. We would be grateful if you would avoid using American Express or other non-UK/EU bank cards because these incur a charge more than twice that of UK cards. We also accept payment by BACS (bank transfer) which some of you prefer and it is better for us too as there are no transaction charges. Our bank details for BACS payments are listed on your invoices too. This is available within most online or app-based banking services. Whichever method you choose to pay your registration fees, please remember to include your invoice number as part of the payment reference.
If you miss the payment terms for your registration, we will email you 60 and 90 day letters as a reminder. These letters come from YourValued and are legitimate emails about your renewals. These emails from YourValued may sometimes end up in your junk folders, so please check your junk folders too.
The NRCPD Registration Services will be closed from 4:00pm on Friday 18th December 2020 for Christmas. For those who are renewing in December, please get your renewals in by 10:00am on Friday 18th December 2020, so that we can process your application and post out ID badges before we close for Christmas. We will re-open at 9:00am on Monday 4th January 2021. For the latest updates about our service delivery during the Christmas period and beyond, please look to our social media feeds (we are active across Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram!).
On the NRCPD Registers as of the end of November 2020, we have:
Registered Sign Language Interpreters: 1282
Regulated Trainee Sign Language Interpreters: 245
Registered Sign Language Translators: 23
Regulated Trainee Sign Language Translators: 1
Lipspeakers: 54
Speech to Text Reporters: 29
Electronic Notetakers: 8
Manual Notetakers: 3
Interpreters for Deafblind People: 13
