Consultation on proposals to make changes to our fees

This consultation closed on Tuesday 13 May 2025 at 5pm. We are no longer accepting responses to this consultation. We are currently analysing the responses to this and plan to publish an outcome in summer 2025. Any further updates will be published on the news section of our website.

Contents

• Introduction
• Which fees are we consulting on
• How we are funded
• Reasons for the proposed changes
• A summary of the proposed changes
• Consultation questions

Introduction

In 2019, we became the regulator of over 97,000 social workers in England. Now, 5 years later we have over 103,000 social workers on our register and the profession continues to grow. Prior to this, social workers had been regulated firstly by the General Social Care Council (GSCC) and then the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC), who at the time regulated 16 professions. It was, however, recognised by government that social work would benefit from a specialist, single-profession regulator that would be able to develop an in-depth understanding of the profession and a regulatory approach tailored to the unique characteristics of social work [1].

Our primary purpose as a regulator is to protect the public, but we also play an important role in raising the quality of education and practice in social work. At Social Work England, we do this through:

• setting profession-specific education and training standards and approving training courses
• setting profession-specific standards for fitness to practise
• maintaining a register of all social workers in England
• running a fitness to practise system
• monitoring and reporting on continuing professional development
• approving post qualifying courses and specialisms

The fees we charge support us to meet our regulatory objectives and goals, which include:

• to protect, promote and maintain the health, safety and wellbeing of the public;
• to promote and maintain public confidence in social workers in England; and 
• to promote and maintain proper professional standards for social workers in England.  

We are now consulting on proposals to change the fees paid by social workers and those applying to join our register. To do this, we would need to amend our fees rules. This requires us to carry out a public consultation before submitting any proposed changes to the Secretary of State for Education. We propose to implement these changes from September 2025. This would mean they would come into effect for the next registration period in 2025 to 2026. The social worker registration period runs from 1 December to 30 November each year, and social workers apply to renew their registration between 1 September and 30 November.

[1] Department for Education and Department of Health, 2016, Regulating Social Workers Policy Statement

Which fees are we consulting on

We are consulting on all our fees. We charge 4 types of fees, which apply to different groups of social workers or applicants as follows:

• Initial registration – the fee paid by applicants applying to join the register for the first time.
• Renewal – the annual fee paid by social workers who are applying to renew their registration with us.
• Restoration – the fee paid by applicants who are applying to re-join the register after a period of time away, having previously been registered with the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC) or Social Work England.
• Scrutiny – the fee paid by applicants who qualified overseas applying to join the register, whose social work qualification is from outside the UK. This fee relates to the additional costs incurred in determining whether an overseas applicant’s qualification and experience is equivalent to someone applying with a qualification gained in the UK.

How we are funded

As an arm’s length body of government, Social Work England is funded by a mixture of grant in aid provided by the Department for Education (DfE) and fees paid by social workers. Some regulators, like the General Medical Council, General Chiropractic Council and General Optical Council, are financially independent from government and so do not receive grant in aid. They therefore charge higher fees than us, as they largely self-fund their activities from fee income.

Under our funding model, from April 2023 to March 2024, 43% (£10m) of our income is drawn from fees, while 57% (£13m) comes from the Department for Education in the form of grant-in-aid. Our budget is overseen by the DfE, and typically agreed annually, with no capacity to hold funds in reserves over multiple years. Importantly, the grant-in-aid enables us to ensure our fee levels are more modest than most other regulators in England, to avoid putting undue burden on social workers. Further detail can be found within our Annual Report for 2023 to 2024.

We regularly review our processes to ensure they are as effective and efficient as possible, as set out in our business plans, as well as undertaking both internal and external audits across different areas of our operations. Since becoming the regulator, we have also worked across our regulatory functions to recognise and develop areas of efficiency. These include optimising our use of accepted disposal in fitness to practise cases, establishing a stable and effective education quality assurance function and through establishing our case review function which offers remediation and support, to help social workers (where possible) get back to unrestricted practice. We have also amended our legal framework in 2022, partly with the goal of providing efficiencies in our regulatory work.

We recognise that we can do more to increase efficiency. As a relatively new organisation we are still establishing norms, including in volume, timeliness and costs. The majority of our revenue budget, 70%, directly supports our objective to regulate and protect, 11% supports prevention and impact, and 19% supports delivery and improvement. In the long-term we want to see the proportion spent on prevention and impact increase over time.

Reasons for the proposed changes

Social workers currently pay an annual renewal fee to maintain their registration, which allows them to use the protected title of social worker in England. The last time these fees were reviewed and increased was in 2015 by the previous regulator, the HCPC. The HCPC consulted on their fees in 2019, shortly before Social Work England became the regulator in December of that year. The HCPC chose not to raise fees for social workers, pending the change of regulator. We therefore adopted the HCPC’s 2015 fee structure and fees have remained at the same levels until now, resulting in a fee level that has not adjusted to inflationary or other cost pressures since this time.

We are proposing to introduce an initial increase in fees from 1 September 2025 for the 2025 to 2026 registration renewal period. We are also proposing an incremental increase in the fees we charge up to 2029, to ensure the fee level is kept in line with the average forecasted annual inflation rates into the future and to help ensure appropriate balance in the financial support of our organisation, in terms of the contribution of the taxpayers and registrants.

Our fees have remained static since our establishment, while the contribution through grant-in-aid has increased every year in recognition that our costs have been higher than expected. This is due to a combination of factors including a higher volume and level of complexity of cases inherited from the HCPC when we were established, the 30% increase in the volume of new concerns received by Social Work England that was not anticipated, as well as inflationary pressures.

We are proposing this fee increase to ensure a more balanced and stable funding base aligned to our true cost of operation. Ultimately, the much needed increases in our grant-in-aid over the past 5 years have tilted the balance towards the taxpayer in terms of covering the true cost of regulating social work in England, with the taxpayer covering 57% of our costs. This is not sustainable over the longer-term.

Now, 5 years into our existence, we have a much clearer picture of how much it costs to regulate and support a growing register of over 103,000 social workers. These costs have not kept pace with the pressures of inflation. We need to strike the right balance between grant-in-aid and fee income from registrants to fulfil our regulatory obligations and to enable positive change in social work. We propose that a fee increase is required, to both take account of broader inflation, and to ensure that this balance remains proportionate and fair, for social workers, for those that need their support, and for the taxpayer. To not increase our fees would potentially exacerbate this tension between the taxpayer and social worker fees contributions, and is not sustainable over the longer-term given the significant strain on public finances.

Financial support for social workers

We are aware that some social work employers, including local authorities, offer reimbursement of initial registration and annual renewal fees as part of their recruitment and retention plans.

UK taxpayers can claim tax relief on professional membership fees, if workers must pay the fees to be able to do their jobs. The option to claim tax relief on annual registration fees is available to many regulated professionals, including social workers, and can be backdated for the 4 previous tax years. This effectively provides a 20% reduction in registration fees for base rate taxpayers. For more information and a comprehensive guide of how to claim tax relief, visit the government website.

A summary of the proposed changes

We propose to increase our fees to bring them into line with the rise of inflation over the ten-year period from 2015 to 2025. For the initial registration and renewal fees this would mean an increase from £90 to £120 for the 2025 to 2026 registration year [2].

We also propose smaller incremental increases of 1.85% per year in subsequent years, again in line with forecasted inflation, up to and including the 2028 to 2029 registration period rounded to the nearest pound [3]. This incremental approach is proposed to avoid the need for larger one-off increases when a fee is unchanged for a long period of time. We propose that this approach would provide more certainty and stability for social workers, in terms of what to expect over time in relation to their fees.

Our current fee structures and the proposed changes are set out in table 1 below. This table shows what the initial increase for each fee would be from September 2025, and then with the adjustment for inflation up to the 2028 to 2029 registration period. It also shows examples of what the fees would be after 20% tax relief.

[2] The Bank of England inflation calculator shows that goods and services costing £90 in 2015 would cost £122 in December 2024.

[3] This is based on an average of the forecasted annual inflation rates for 2026 to 2028, as provided by the Office for Budget Responsibility.

This consultation period was for 12 weeks. This consultation ended on Tuesday, 13 May 2025. We are no longer accepting responses to this consultation.

We will publish a consultation response and decision to this consultation in summer 2025.

If we decide to increase our fees, we will contact everyone on the social work register directly to inform them of any changes and what this will mean for them.