Helping you ensure your fertility or research clinic is following current regulations and guidance.

8th Code of Practice

The HFEA Code of Practice is intended to help and encourage licensed centres to understand and comply with their legal requirements.

It also gives guidance on how centres are expected to go about meeting those requirements.

• View the new Code of Practice now

Guidance

Directions: Directions are essentially rules that clinics need to follow. They have been updated to reflect changes in the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008 and in HFEA policy.   

Chair's letters: Notifications to licensed centres of changes to HFEA policy.

Chief Executive's letters: CE letters provide relevant information about developments at the HFEA and notify licensed clinics of changes to HFEA operating procedures.

Forms to use in your clinic

Consent forms: Record patient consent to various aspects of fertility treatment.

Patients and donors registration forms: Record the registration of fertility treatment patients, and their partner, at your clinic. Includes welfare of the child form.

Clinic operation forms: includes - Confidential declaration form, Person Responsible or Nominal Licensee form, Import and export of gametes and embryo forms and ICSI practitioner forms.

Guide to compliance

HFEA inspection cycle: The HFEA’s continuous monitoring of licensed UK fertility centres involves a four year inspection cycle. Find out what happens before, during and after an inspection visit.

Complying with the Code of Practice: See what inspectors consider when making assessments of a centre’s practice and how that links to the guidance notes in the HFEA Code of Practice.

Clinic incidents: Reporting adverse incidents is recognised as one of the best ways of ensuring that errors and their causes are identified and the opportunity for them to happen again is reduced.

...more about how we monitor your clinic

Guide to licence applications and inspections

The guide to licence applications and inspections will take you through the process of applying for your first licence, renewing an existing one and preparing for your inspection. 

You can also find out how to make variations to a licence you may already hold.

Getting a licence can be an involved and lengthy process - make sure you are prepared before starting the application process. 

...read the guide to licence applications and inspections

‘One at a time’ is running a series of workshops in early 2012.

The workshops are designed to help and support clinics in achieving the target maximum multiple birth rate, which is currently 15%.

The sessions will provide an opportunity to share best practice and learn from other professionals in the sector, as well as to hear about findings of HFEA data analysis on multiple births and trends.

The workshops, which will be held during the afternoon, will follow the format of those held in summer 2008, which were well attended (reaching 75% of licensed clinics) and well-received by delegates.

Workshop dates:

8 February - London
21 February - Edinburgh
6 March - Bristol
20 March - Manchester

Please click here to email us and reserve a place, please email us before 1 February 2012.
Please state your name, role, clinic/organisation and which workshop you’d like to attend.

PRs will be aware of the decisions the Authority took about the compensation to be paid to sperm and egg donors.

This is to remind you that these decisions have not yet been implemented and the new fixed sum approach has not yet been introduced.

This will be done by means of a revision to Direction 0001 which will require the agreement of our Compliance Committee which has the task of determining the basis of implementation and enforcement.

A revised Direction 0001 is expected to be published by the end of December 2011.

• HFEA Directions
• Donor compensation - press release

A quality manual is a fundamental part of any Quality Management System (QMS) and it is mandatory for fertility clinics licensed by the HFEA to have a Quality Management System in place. 

A collaborative project involving the British Fertility Society, Association of Clinical Embryologists and the HFEA has been undertaken to develop a skeleton quality manual for the ART sector.

The skeleton manual below has been produced to help centres who are developing their own quality manual: there is no requirement for centres to use this template or to replace their existing quality manual.

• Quality manual (776 Kb)

The Self assessment questionnaire (SAQ) assesses how compliant your clinic is with the HFE Act 1990 (as amended) and standard licence conditions.

Download a copy of the SAQ:

• Self assessment questionnaire (SAQ) (460 Kb)

NOTE: this PDF is for reference only - the SAQ has to be completed through the Clinic portal.

...login to the Clinic portal

Login to update your clinic's details, apply for treatment, storage and research licences, read incident alerts, complete the SAQ and Special Directions.

Clinic portal login

Forgot your login details? Contact us for help portalsupport@hfea.gov.uk