The SRA’s business plan for the year that began on 1 November puts its funding requirement at £111.5m, up £25m or 29% on 2025/26, to pay for a rebuild of its operations and a new proactive supervision function.
For an individual solicitor, the combined SRA-related practising certificate fee and compensation fund contribution is expected to rise from £260 to £360, the regulator said.
The SRA said it will need to collect £240 from each individual practising certificate fee to meet the requirement. The plan runs from 1 November to 31 October 2027.
In its plan for 2025/26, published on 31 October 2025, the SRA set the combined figure at £260, a rise of 2.4% or £6. The SRA portion of the fee was then £190, up from £164, and the compensation fund contribution was £70, down from £90.
The SRA said the changes are “essential to getting the basics right, restoring confidence in our delivery and creating the conditions for a more modern, proportionate and effective regulator”.
It said the plan “will require bold and sometimes difficult choices to modernise how the SRA works”, including reducing activity in areas that are not an immediate priority.
The SRA’s consultation document said the number of misconduct reports it assessed rose by 45% between November 2022 and October 2025, from 11,378 to 16,499.
The 2025/26 plan had recorded a 30% increase in reports between November 2024 and September 2025 against the same period a year earlier, with investigations opening on average 46% more a month. At that point the SRA said it was not yet clear what was driving the rise.
On interventions, the SRA said it had carried out 35 between November 2025 and mid-April 2026, against 42 in the whole of the 2024/25 business year. It also cited rising storage costs for documents and files seized from firms it has intervened in.
The SRA said the increase in funding for investigation and enforcement reflects the need to “dual run”: managing rising volumes of current cases while building new capability such as proactive supervision.
The compensation fund contribution is rising because of the closure of PM Law Limited in February 2026. The SRA said the closure led to a significant increase in the value and volume of claims, with current applications totalling over £20m as of April 2026. Some claims still need to be assessed for eligibility and further applications are expected, it said.
The SRA said unexpected spending, including adverse cost orders, and resourcing decisions to manage pressure on core work had reduced the reserves it expects to hold at the end of 2025/26.
The application for approval of the fees, lodged under section 51, proposes that the individual practising certificate fee total rise from £148.4m in 2025/26 to £178.1m. Of the amount to be collected, £111.5m (63%) is allocated to regulatory activities. It also shows a draft budget surplus of £10.3m, included to rebuild reserves.
The SRA said its Board reduced the initial proposed funding requirement after challenge. Any additional requirement above the level will need Board approval for funding from reserves.
Practising fees account for 57% of the SRA’s funding, according to the consultation document. The SRA’s consultation ran from 8 May to 22 June, and the Law Society’s from 27 April to 15 May.