From 1 April 2026 the cost for applying for an SIA licence for any sector will be £204, as the temporary £20 rebate scheme comes to an end.
Over the last 6 years, the SIA has been able to use historical reserves, accrued before April 2020, to provide a £20 per licence rebate towards the application fee cost. In practice, this is currently reducing the amount paid by an applicant from £204 to £184 a licence. Those historical reserves are now fully exhausted and so the cost to apply for a licence will revert to the statutory fee of £204.
The statutory licence fee itself is not increasing. It has remained at £204 since the SIA reduced it from £210 in April 2023. The change means applicants will no longer benefit from the £20 rebate.
Both first-time applications and renewals will cost £204 from 1 April 2026.
Michelle Russell, SIA Chief Executive, said:
Since 2020, we were allowed to subsidise the cost of an SIA licence from previous historical reserves which had been built up. Those reserves are now gone, and we have a responsibility as a self-funding regulator to charge the full cost of the services we deliver.
We have worked to keep the licence fee as low as possible and have absorbed rising third party costs along the way. At £204, the fee remains considerably lower in real terms than when we introduced licensing more than two decades ago. We will continue to drive efficiency and productivity so we can keep costs down for the people we regulate.
The SIA is largely self-funding, save for the capital grant funding it receives from the Home Office each year.
The individual licence fee set covers all related operating costs as well as relevant overheads, taking care to minimise cross-subsidising other fees (including ACS fees).
The fee remains cheaper in real terms than when SIA licensing began. The licence cost £190 in 2004. If accounting for inflation, that would be £347 today.
