Professional Standards Authority publishes review of Social Work England’s performance in 2025

The Professional Standards Authority for Health and Social Care (PSA) has published its annual monitoring review which provides information on Social Work England’s performance for 1 January to 31 December 2025.

Social Work England has met 16 of the PSA’s 18 Standards of Good Regulation.

These standards cover all aspects of our work including general standards, guidance and standards, equality, diversity and inclusion, education and training, registration, and fitness to practise.

Social Work England is one of 10 UK professional regulators overseen by the PSA. Read the full review for 2025 on the PSA’s website.

Our overall performance against the PSA’s Standards of Good Regulation

• 5 out of 5 general standards met
• 2 out of 2 of the standards relating to guidance and standards met
• 2 out of 2 education and training standards met
• 3 out of 4 registration standards met
• 4 out of 5 fitness to practise standards met

The PSA gave particular focus to our performance linked to Standard 3 which focuses on equality, diversity and inclusion. The PSA were pleased to see:

• that our board had more oversight of our equality, diversity and inclusion work including our approach to co-production
• our work surrounding guidance for witnesses and vulnerable witnesses in response to a witness to harm project, they consider this to be good practice
• the work we have been doing to develop a set of fair referral principles to address over representation in our fitness to practise processes
• the workshops we hold with employers encouraging them to think about diversity data
• the continued equality, diversity and inclusion training we provide our staff working in our fitness to practise teams

We continue to build on this work and have been working on a joint pilot with the East Region to understand the experience of Black, male social work practitioners and leaders. Further information about our equality, diversity and inclusion work related to can be read in our quarterly update.

The PSA continues to be reassured that we meet all the standards which relate to guidance and standards, and education and training. They reflected that:

• Our proposed guidance for social workers when communicating online (which we consulted on in 2025) will be a helpful addition once finalised and published.
• We are implementing our learning from our first round of education and training reapproval activity and using insight and pre-consultation engagement to review our current education and training guidance. They also welcomed our latest report: preparing for practice: social work education in England.
• They noted that we are consistently meeting our inspections targets for social work courses and for approved mental health professional and best interests assessor courses.

The PSA is confident that we continue to maintain and publish an accurate register, the process of registration operates fairly and efficiently, and we continue to protect against misuse of title.

The PSA felt we did not meet the requirements of standard 13 as we have continued to pause our review of 2.5% of CPD records submitted and have not put an interim system in place. The PSA acknowledged that we do have some controls in place to assure ourselves social workers have submitted 2 pieces of CPD along with at least 1 piece of peer reflection. They also understood our reasons to pause the review to enable us to undertake work to redesign our CPD process.

We paused the review of 2.5% of CPD records as we felt this was providing limited insight into the quality of CPD undertaken. We have engaged extensively across the sector regarding CPD and will be using the insights and evidence gathered from these activities, and the last 5 years of our regulation, to design a strengthened CPD model that provides assurance to the public, and that works for social workers and employers. We discussed our latest plans for this with Social Work England’s board on Friday 13 March 2026 and are continuing to develop our proposals for our CPD model which will also be informed by any recommendations that may come from the Independent Review of Social Work Regulation.

We met 4 out of 5 of the standards of good regulation under fitness to practise. The PSA noted that:

• we continue to identify and prioritise cases that may cause risk to the public and interim orders continue to be in place where required
• decisions made are proportionate, consistent and fair

Due to continuing delays in case progression in our fitness to practise process the PSA found we did not meet standard 15. However, the PSA noted that we have been undertaking a wide range of activities to increase the rate at which we can progress cases and reduce delays in our fitness to practise process, despite increased referral rates and challenges in the use of restricted information.

We continue to acknowledge that the delays we are experiencing in our fitness to practise process are unacceptable to those involved.

Throughout 2025 we received approximately 31% more referrals than in the previous year, equating to over 600 more referrals than anticipated.

Colum Conway, Chief Executive at Social Work England commented:

“We are committed to meeting all 18 Standards of Good Regulation, and this year we have met 16. We remain focused on all the standards. We are acting on the areas for improvement identified by the PSA, which include timeliness in our fitness to practise process and the assurance of our CPD review.

“We are further investing in all parts of the fitness to practise process and anticipate that this will have an impact on timeliness in the year ahead. We have completed a review of the triage and investigation stages of our fitness to practise process to identify opportunities for greater efficiency and effectiveness. At the end of this financial year, we are ahead of our targets to reduce the number of cases awaiting a final hearing.

“We are committed to further developing our approach to CPD to provide greater assurance to the public that social workers continue to develop their knowledge, skills and experience in line with their professional standards. We know there are a range of views on CPD and professional regulation in social work. We will plan our next steps in response to any recommendations made by the Independent Review of Social Work Regulation.”