A PREP journey is deliberately short. There is no preparation programme to buy and no documentation phase. Most organisations move from framework access to review inside a single quarter — and the ones that already treat people well move faster than they expect.
A one-time fee, the same for every sector. Payment opens the complete framework for your sector — all 11 domains, 53 Practices and 112 Hallmarks with guidance — plus the One-Page Library templates and the guidance notes. Nothing else is charged until you apply, and access commits you to nothing.
Read the framework with your team and close your own gaps at your own pace, with the guidance notes and templates. Nobody reviews you at this stage, and most of what the framework surfaces costs nothing to fix — a sign rewritten, a greeting agreed, a washroom check added to the round.
Apply directly and separately in the portal — your organisation's registration details, legal identity, licences where your sector requires them, and the application fee. The Secretariat verifies your particulars and the completeness of your submission.
The Self-Assessment opens with your application, as part of it — it is not a public tool and it is not part of framework access. Work through all 112 Hallmarks with your team, rating each one Delivered, Developing or Not yet. The portal shows your position against all three conditions of the bar, domain by domain, and flags any Essential Hallmark not yet Delivered.
When you are ready, you say so — and the ninety-day review window opens. From that moment, a reviewer may arrive on any working day. Your head of organisation is told the window is open; nobody else is told anything.
One or two reviewers spend a working day inside your organisation. They arrive as any person would, watch, listen, talk to the people you serve and to your team, and rate what they observe. They do not ask for files, and they never examine clinical or technical practice. You receive a verbal summary before they leave.
The Secretariat reviews the report against the three conditions. If all three are met, the Star is awarded, the certificate and badge kit are issued and your organisation is listed on the public register. If they are not, you receive the same full report, a named contact and an open invitation to return after ninety days.
A scheduled inspection shows an organisation at its rehearsed best. An unannounced visit shows what people actually encounter on an ordinary Tuesday afternoon.
Knowing that a reviewer may walk in at any time within the window does something no audit calendar can: it keeps an organisation genuinely ready. Not preparing for a date — simply delivering, every day. That constant readiness is precisely the culture the eleven domains describe.
The unannounced model is not a trap. It is a validation. It exists to confirm what a good organisation is already doing, and to hand it proof that no scheduled audit can offer. A Star earned on an unrehearsed day says something far stronger than one earned on a date circled in the calendar. It says: this is simply who we are.
Teams take real pride in it, too. There is no audit-week scramble and no staged performance — only recognition of the work they already do.
A PREP review uses experience methods only.
Conversations with the people you serve, and with the companions who came with them.
Observation of everything a person passes through — the entrance, reception, waiting areas, corridors, treatment and service areas, washrooms, the food, the billing desk, the exit.
Conversations with your team, in any role, about how they serve people. Never about clinical or technical practice.
A look at the One-Page Library — the handful of single-page documents PREP asks for.
A reviewer will not open a medical record, question a treatment, evaluate a training programme or ask for a policy manual. If you are asked for anything longer than one page, something has gone wrong — tell the Secretariat.
PREP asks for very little on paper, and never more than a page of it.
Templates for all five are in the portal. Adapt them, sign them, display them. That is the whole documentation requirement of the programme.
The PREP Star is valid for one year. Renewal is not a re-application: you pay the annual fee, keep doing what you do, and a reviewer arrives unannounced within the renewal window.
Between reviews, the Secretariat keeps a light watch — the feedback route inside your organisation, your public reviews, and anything raised directly with PREP. Organisations that hold their standard renew smoothly, year after year. Sustained deterioration leads to a corrective-action requirement and, if unresolved, suspension of the Star and of the public listing.