Guidance

April 2026 change to the SIA licence fee

Published 4 March 2026

1. What the change means for licence applicants

Questions answered in this section:

1.1 If I apply before 1 April 2026 will I pay the current reduced fee?

Yes. The rebated fee of £184 will be in place until 31 March 2026. The fee increase only applies to applications we receive after 1 April 2026.

1.2 How much is a renewal application?

A renewal application will still cost the same as a first-time application. This means that a renewal application will cost £204 from 1 April 2026.

1.3 The instructions you sent me [Next Steps] say that I need to pay £184, but your licence fee has gone up. Does that mean I need to pay £204 when I go to the post office?

No, you will only need to pay the amount you were quoted in your Next Steps messages. This is the fee that was in place at the time that you submitted your application.

2. The reason the fee is changing

Questions answered in this section:

2.1 Why are you raising the fee?

Since April 2020 we have been allowed by HM Treasury to use surplus accumulated funds from previous years to provide a £20 rebate to the licence fee, to keep it as low as possible. We have now exhausted those reserves. This means that we must revert to our statutory licence fee of £204.

2.2 Are you using the fees to pay for Martyn’s Law?

The cost of the SIA’s work on Martyn’s Law is not met from licence fee funds. There are separate funding arrangements in place for the Home Office to provide grant funding to the SIA for its preparatory and future Martyn’s Law work. This was something the SIA was insistent on protecting when it agreed to become the Martyn’s Law Regulator.

2.3 Can the SIA absorb these costs and keep the fees at the lower rate?

We have already absorbed a lot of cost increases since we first reduced the statutory licence fee from £245 to £220 in January 2012. We were able to make this first reduction by creating efficiencies in our operation. We reduced the statutory fee again, to £210, in October 2019. The subsequent £20 reduction in April 2020 came after we were given permission to use our historic reserves to provide a fee rebate. We made a further reduction to the statutory fee, from £210 to £204, in April 2023.

The SIA is largely self-funding, except for the capital grant funding it receives from the Home Office each year.

The individual licence fee set covers all related operating costs including customer service and compliance, as well as overheads, taking care to minimise cross-subsidising other fees (including ACS fees, meaning that the individual licence fee needs to cover the costs of running individual licensing and the ACS fees need to cover the cost of running the ACS).

We publish a breakdown of our costs in our annual report. The table below show how the licence fee was spent in the financial year 1 April 2024 to 31 March 2025.

Item	Percentage of total cost
Salaries and staff costs	55%
Direct licensing costs	25%
Financial costs	9%
IT services	6%
Accommodation and office costs	5%
Consultancy	0.3%

Our role as a regulator is to keep people safe and secure; our systems must be robust to deliver this. If we are to achieve full cost recovery, the individual statutory application fee must remain at £204.

2.4 Can the SIA dip into its profits to reduce the fee?

We are a government body. Under government funding rules, the SIA must charge and set its fees at a level to recover the full costs of the services provided and in a way that ensures government neither profits at the expense of consumers nor makes a loss for taxpayers to subsidise. Our focus is on carrying out our responsibilities efficiently and providing value for money to the public, licence holders and applicants.

We are required to return any surplus funds generated to HM Treasury at the end of each 3-year funding cycle.

2.5 Why did the SIA hold reserves? How long has it had them?

The agreed licence rebate scheme started in 2020 for a maximum of 2 licensing cycles (6 years, ending by 31 March 2026), with the aim of utilising a historic accumulated reserve balance (around £18m). It was approved by HM Treasury as an arrangement to ensure that the SIA did not hold any unnecessary reserves going forward. The rebate, applied at the point of payment, was established at £20 based on the volume of applications the SIA expected over the 6-year period (around 800,000). Those historical reserves have now expired.

3. Will the SIA be changing any other fees?

Questions answered in this section:

3.1 Are you planning to change any other fees?

As a public body, we are required to set fees at a level which is full cost recovery. We keep our fees constantly under review.

3.2 Will the ACS fees be going up?

Just as we need to ensure full cost recovery with the individual licensing regime, we also need to ensure that the ACS fully covers its costs. We are currently reviewing the ACS fees and will be able to confirm any changes to ACS fees in the next few months.

4. General information about the SIA licence fee

Questions answered in this section:

4.1 Why is the licence fee so expensive?

The licence fee is cheaper in real terms, after accounting for inflation, than it was when we first introduced licensing 22 years ago. In 2004 the statutory licence fee was £190. Since April 2023, the statutory fee set was £204. This means that it is now considerably cheaper to apply for a licence than it was in 2004. If adjusted for inflation using the Consumer Price Index the fee would now be £347 (according to the Bank of England’s inflation calculator, which uses data from the Office of National Statistics).

4.2 How much have licence fees been in the past?

Licence fees payable by applicants over time have been as follows:

• 2004 (start of licensing): £190
• April 2007: increased to £245
• January 2012: reduced to £220
• October 2019: reduced to £210
• April 2020: reduced to £190 (statutory fee of £210 minus £20 rebate)
• April 2023: reduced to £184 (reduced statutory fee of £204 minus £20 rebate)
• April 2026: reverted to £204 (statutory fee; end of rebate)

4.3 How long will the fee stay at £204?

We are required to review the licence fee each year and we are committed to ensuring that we are as efficient as possible in how we go about our work.