24 September 2026
Dear PRs
HFEA Choose a Fertility Clinic (CaFC) – data update
I am writing to you further to my email on 16 September regarding the short delay to the update to Choose a Fertility Clinic (CaFC) data. We will update CaFC with data covering treatments in 2025 and live births in 2024 in the week commencing 28 September 2026.
The Authority met yesterday to discuss the position on publishing incomplete and/or unverified data for the small number of clinics that failed to comply with the requirements of data submission and verification in General Direction 0005 (GD0005).
The Authority have decided that:
- For those clinics that have submitted partial or full data to the HFEA and/or have not signed it off (or expressed a wish that it is not published), their data will be published on the HFEA website with a caveat if there are concerns about the number reported or lack of sign off. Only where a clinic has submitted insufficient data to calculate reasonably reliable headline statistics would no data be published – in such cases this would be a compliance issue that can be advanced separately.
- If data is subsequently submitted, then it will be added to CaFC in due course.
- Any clinic who has not met the publication deadline will have this noted as a non-compliance at the next inspection.
- In future years, full CaFC submission deadlines will be published in advance and if these deadlines are not met then inspectors will be informed when a clinic does not comply with GD0005 so this can be noted as a non-compliance at the following inspection.
I would like to remind PRs that you must take care to avoid misleading patients in the presentation of success rates. Data about success rates on clinic websites and other patient information including on social media should be presented in line with HFEA Code of Practice requirements (guidance note 4.10) and the joint enforcement notice with the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA). All clinic success rate data should refer to the HFEA as the source of national information through its CaFC tool.
The Authority papers are published on our website and a recording of the meeting will be available shortly on YouTube.
For any queries relating to CaFC data or the methodologies used, please contact prismsupport@hfea.gov.uk.
Yours,
Peter Thompson
Chief Executive