National Clinical Impact Award 2025 round is open - BASHH guidance and signposting
03 April 2025
Dear Colleague,
The 2025 National Clinical Impact Awards (NCIA) round opened on Tuesday 01 April 2025 and the window for applications is scheduled to close on Tuesday 27 May 2025 at 17:00. Any applications after this time will not be considered by the Advisory Committee on Clinical Impact Awards (ACCIA).
The NCIAs replaced the previous National Clinical Excellence Awards and application for NCIAs is open to medical or dental practitioners working as a consultant doctor or dentist, an academic GP or clinical academic who are fully registered with the GMC or GDC with a licence to practice. They also need to have met the eligibility conditions for at least one year, on 1 April in the award year in which they are applying. So for 2025, this would mean meeting the conditions for at least one year on 1 April 2025. If you are unsure about your eligibility you can email accia@dhsc.gov.uk if you work in England and accia@wales.nhs.uk if you work in Wales.
From 2023, ACCIA discontinued the process of specialty organisations providing citations and rankings so BASHH is no longer able to submit these. The applicant must fill in their own NCIA application form and organisations are not permitted to edit or directly critique the NCIA application.
However, BASHH is able to signpost members to generic training and tools (see below and attached) to assist with applications and provide general guidance.
There are also some further changes this year, as detailed, in the attached 2025 NCIA updates document:
- Employer citations/statements - these will no longer be required, instead ACCIA will ask a series of questions to confirm that the contents of the form are correct and the applicant is meeting their contractual obligations.
- Care Quality Commission/Health Inspectorate Wales ratings - applicants will no longer be asked to provide these, though they can still comment on their impact on such ratings in their domain evidence if they wish.
- Timing of award payments - this changes for all new awards granted in the 2025 round and payment will commence 1 April 2026 and run for five years from that date. This will harmonise all awards granted in any given year. This differs from the previous process of backdating award payments for the first year. This new rule will only apply to the 2025 awards round and subsequent years.
Applications for a NCIA need to be made via the ACCIA portal and eligible individuals can register via the - ACCIA portal.
The following tools are available from the ACCIA to support individual applications:
- The 2025 ACCIA guidance can be accessed via the following link to the applicant and employer guidance that explain how the process works and what to include in an application. There is also further information to help you on the Clinical Impact Awards: guidance collection page. Please make sure you read all of this information thoroughly.
- ACCIA have produced the attached summary information to act as a first introduction for applicants, giving them an overview of what assessors are looking for when scoring an application and the importance of the different elements of the guidance.
- The ACCIA home page can be accessed via ACCIA home page and the ACCIA Secretariat can be contacted via 020 7972 4608, or by emailing accia@dhsc.gov.uk for awards in England, or accia@wales.nhs.uk for awards in Wales.
BASHH is keen to support any eligible colleagues who wish to apply for a NCIA and it’s updated ‘Top Tips’ guidance for NCIA applications is attached.
You may also find it helpful to speak with local colleagues who have experience of CIA or CEA applications and if you would like to contact BASHH for support about application queries or the process then please contact admin@bashh.org.
Best wishes.
Elizabeth
Elizabeth Carlin
Secretary BASHH CIA Group