It's still the same in the UK as it always was, just plus this credit thing. If you're maverick enough you can dodge it by being a good enough researcher that they aren't going to kick you out for not attending workshops, but that's probably going to get harder. Most people cram enough workshops into one week at the end of each year to get the necessary credits to "progress".

You can also get credits for publications and attending conferences, but the credits you can get like that are capped at about 20% of what you need. So you can have 10 publications in a year and still need to attend workshops.