The Department for Education (DfE) has reduced its planned funding for Social Work England this year due to a projected underspend by the regulator.
The department had budgeted to increase its grant for the regulator by £5.2m this year, including to help it tackle fitness to practise backlogs.
However, this increase has now been scaled back after Social Work England underspent its budget in the first half of 2025-26 and projected that expenditure would come in significantly under planned levels by the end of the year.
Budget underspend
Once income from social worker fees had been taken into account, the regulator spent £6.665m in the first six months of the financial year, against a budget of £7.318m, an underspend of £653,000, according to a report to its board meeting on 31 October.As of 30 September 2025, it projected that it would underspend the full-year budget - £17.084m - by £969,000, 5.7% of the total, above its target of ending the year with spending being within 1.5% of budget.
Consequently, the DfE has reduced grant funding for the second half of the year, bringing forecast spending into line with the 1.5% target.
Vacant posts and challenges scaling up work
The underspend was driven by the regulator not being able to scale up work carried out by external suppliers, including those providing legal services for fitness to practise cases, as quickly as intended and having vacant posts.These included having three vacancies in its case examiner team - whose role involves reviewing fitness to practise investigations to determine how social workers' cases should be managed - though these are due to be filled in December, said the board report.
In a statement to Community Care, a Social Work England spokesperson said that it was "unable to hold funds in reserve over multiple years, and any surplus is expected to be returned or managed within [the DfE]". However, it said that the underspend was a "short-term issue".
Hike in social worker fees
The news comes with the regulator having increased its fees for practitioners by a third this year, meaning that the initial registration and annual renewal fees have both increased from £90 to £120.The decision was made despite opposition from the vast majority of about 8,000 respondents - mostly social workers - to its consultation and from the British Association of Social Workers (BASW), Social Workers Union (SWU) and UNISON.
The fee rise is designed to reflect the impact of inflation since the last increase in registration fees, in 2015, and rebalance the regulator's income away from DfE grant to charges on social workers, in the context of higher than expected costs. The rise is due to net Social Work England an additional £1.1m in 2025-26.
Fee increase 'will make funding sustainable'
The Social Work England spokesperson added: "The increase to social worker’s fees will make sure we have a more balanced and stable funding base aligned to our true cost of operation."Fees have remained static for the last 10 years, while the contribution in grant-in-aid has increased every year since our establishment. The increase in fees will make sure our funding is sustainable longer-term."
