Changes in regulatory fees

The fees that providers will have to pay to cover the chargeable costs of regulation have been revised.

Government policy requires us to move towards fully recovering the chargeable costs of regulating health and adult social care in England, and fees for most providers have been increased to meet this obligation.

We carried out a public consultation on our fees proposals. Responses expressed a strong preference for achieving full chargeable cost recovery over four years, but, following the Government’s Spending Review, our level of grant for 2016/17 is such that we have had to recommend fees for 2016/17 against a two-year option, except for dental and home care providers, so we have sufficient funding to fulfil our statutory functions. The Secretary of State has agreed to this.

The amounts charged to services in 2016/17 differ depending on the current level of cost of regulation in each sector and how close they currently are to full cost recovery. The two sectors furthest from full chargeable cost recovery are NHS GPs and the community social care sector (such as home care agencies).

• Home care agencies will be subject to fee changes on the basis of the four-year trajectory towards full cost recovery.
• The Government has recently announced additional funding for GP practices to cover the expense of the required increases to fees in 2016/17.

General dental practices will pay the same fees in 2016/17 as they have done for 2015/16, since we already fully recover the chargeable costs of their regulation.

The new fees will take effect from 1 April 2016.

We will publish our response to the consultation and other supporting information on 6 April.