The Assessment of Professional Competence (APC) assessor role is about supporting planners as they take the next step in their career and apply for Chartered membership. You will be assessing candidates’ written submissions. The assessor work is completed in the evenings and weekends, so it can fit around work and life commitments. To be an APC Assessor you need to have been a Chartered member for a minimum of three years.
How to apply
If you are an existing assessor, please complete the assessor recruitment survey to tell the Membership team if you would like to continue assessing, or not, next year.
If you are a Chartered member with three years of experience in that membership class and would like to sign up to be an assessor, please complete the new assessor survey to register your interest.
Existing assessor survey
New assessor survey
Both surveys close at 9.00 am on Friday 31 October.
Assessor handbook
You can find out what's required in assessing all routes to Chartered membership in our Assessor Handbook.
The handbook contains information on:
- the details of the various stakeholders involved;
- the practicalities of the assessment process and annual schedule;
- advice on completing the Candidate Feedback Forms;
- the role of Reflective Journal or examples of professional work in the
assessment; - the key differences in assessing the different routes and classes; and
the assessor monitoring process and the restrictions on advising candidates
What to expect after you sign up as an APC assessor?
Complete the assessor recruitment survey
Please complete either the existing assessor or new assessor survey, as appropriate, please see above.
What you will receive from the RTPI before the end of the year
The Membership team aims to send out acknowledgement emails to everyone who has completed the survey and has expressed an interest in assessing. You should receive an acknowledgement email two weeks after the survey closes (Friday 14 November).
Before the end of the year, we will send you a confirmation email confirming whether you have been selected to be an assessor for those applying to be a new assessor. If you are an existing assessor or returning to assessor again next year, we will also send you an email to confirm if you have been reappointed to assess in 2026.
Additionally, before the end of the year we will send you an email with a link to the updated assessor hub, so assessors can start to familiarise themselves with the relevant documentation including the assessor handbook and main guidance handbooks. We will also ask you to start to read the standardisation submission and decide how you would assess it. There will be a discussion and feedback session about the marking of the standardisation submission at the training sessions.
Sign and return the Service Level Agreement (SLA)
Within the first two weeks of January you will be sent a Service level agreement to sign and return and you will be informed of who your co-assessor pair will be for 2026. The assessor pairings will change each year, so you can gain more experience by working with new assessors.
Attend assessor training
At the end of January and beginning of February, there will be the assessor training sessions, both in-person in 2026. Attendance each year is mandatory at one of the sessions. There will be an additional training session for new assessors only.
We hope you enjoy your work as an APC assessor and find it rewarding. Thank you for giving your time to help planners take an important step in their careers by applying for chartered membership. If you have any questions about the assessor role, please feel free to contact the Membership team at apcassessors@rtpi.org.uk