The practising certificate fee is set to rise from £326 to £382 for 2026/27 under the joint application the SRA and the Law Society have now put to the Legal Services Board, part of a £224m total collection from solicitors that runs 29% above the current year. The numbers are now concrete, but nothing takes effect until the LSB approves the application.
Where does the £224m go?
The total splits into practising fees and Compensation Fund contributions. Practising fees account for £178m, a 20% increase on the current year, of which £112m (63%) goes to the SRA and £38m (21%) to the Law Society, while the remaining £28m funds the levies for the Legal Ombudsman, the Legal Services Board, the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal and the Office for Professional Body Anti-Money Laundering Supervision. The society’s own portion rises just 2%. It is drawing £6m from reserves to hold its increase down, against free reserves of £45m and total reserves of £77m, and has put the fire-damaged 114 annex to its Chancery Lane headquarters on the letting market. Regulation drives the rise, not representation.
How much will individual solicitors pay?
The individual practising certificate fee moves from £326 to £382, an increase of 17% held below the headline 20% by solicitor numbers continuing to climb towards roughly 194,000. Firms pay 60% of the total. Our earlier report on the practising certificate fee rise covered the SRA’s consultation-stage figure of £240, which was the SRA element of the individual fee alone; the £382 in the application is the full certificate cost once the Law Society share and the statutory levies are added. Compensation Fund contributions come on top, under a separate application still to be made. The SRA wants £46m for the fund, £20m more than this year, and is shifting the burden so that individuals pay 70% of what is needed rather than the usual half: subject to LSB approval, the individual contribution jumps from £70 to £170, a 143% rise, while firms move from £1,950 to £2,170.
Why does the SRA need 29% more?
The application repeats the case the regulator made in its draft business plan consultation: an extra £25m in core funding to fix foundations that have not kept pace with the market it regulates. It cites more large firm closures, rising concern about the high-volume consumer claims market, and a significant and sustained increase in misconduct reports. Enforcement is the sharpest line in the budget. External disciplinary and enforcement legal costs reached £11.7m, 55% higher than last year, driven by the Post Office Horizon investigations and by adverse costs orders that required significant payments in year, and the SRA says an end-to-end review of its investigation and enforcement processes is under way in response. The draft budget shows total income of £195m, including £59m from the Solicitors Qualifying Examination and £10m recovered from the Compensation Fund for administering it and conducting interventions, with a planned £10.3m surplus to rebuild reserves to around £22m after this year’s deliberate £10m deficit.
Has the LSB approved the practising certificate fee?
No. The application is lodged and the Legal Services Board must now decide it, so every figure above remains a proposal until approval, and the separate Compensation Fund application has yet to follow. The practising year starts in November. Solicitors weighing what they get for eight regulators’ worth of levies can start with our guide to who regulates whom across legal services, because the fee debate and the single-regulator debate are converging on the same question of value.
The application puts hard numbers on the cost of the SRA’s rebuild and moves individuals to a structurally larger share of the Compensation Fund for the first time. Nothing is settled until the LSB decides, so budgeting for renewal in November means planning for a £382 certificate plus a £170 fund contribution while both remain formally provisional.