Interagency fee
The interagency fee is a charge that is paid when a local authority places a child with an adopter approved by another adoption agency (this could be another local authority, a regional adoption agency, or a voluntary adoption agency).
Interagency fee for 2025-26
The interagency fee increases every year on 1 April in line with Consumer Price Inflation including Owner Occupiers’ Housing Costs (CPIH) for the previous calendar year, as published by the Office for National Statistics.
The uplift in the interagency fee from 1st April 2025 will be 5.9%. This uplift is based on the CPIH rate of 3.9% and, for the first time, an additional 2% to recognise the operational cost increase to the voluntary sector from the increase to employer National Insurance Contributions (NICs) that were announced in the autumn budget. This was an unexpected additional cost with implications for VAAs in continuing to deliver services, so we hope that our decision to apply the additional uplift (mirroring action being taken across the wider voluntary sector) will be understood and supported.
The fee information for 2025/26 is as follows:
Interagency fee rates and terms 2025 to 2026 – England and Wales
Interagency Fee rates & terms 2025 to 2026 – Northern Ireland
Interagency Fee rates & terms 2025 to 2026 – Scotland
Interagency fee for 2024-25
Interagency Fee rates & terms 2024 to 2025 – Scotland
(Note: the above letter was updated with the correct fees on 15/11/24)
Interagency Fee rates & terms 2024 to 2025 – England and Wales
Interagency Fe rates & terms 2024 to 2025 – Northern Ireland
Interagency fee guidance and additional information
The CoramBAAF Form IA 2021 (UK-wide) can be downloaded here.
CVAA produced a briefing in 2022 about the interagency fee in cases where children have been placed with families for over 12 months without an Adoption Order being made. The briefing summarises a survey of our members and explains how the fee is used by VAAs and why it is important.
Background to the fee
The purpose of the interagency fee is to ensure that agencies receive adequate payment for the work involved in recruiting, assessing, preparing, approving and matching their adopters, and in supporting a child’s start in their adoptive family’s home. It is also intended to encourage the matching of children and adopters across agency boundaries, which is crucial for avoiding delay and ensuring the best possible matches for children.
Please note that the interagency fee is paid by adoption agencies – it is not charged to adopters.
Since 1992, CVAA has set the interagency fee for placement with a VAA, and reviewed and uplifted it when necessary to keep pace with rising costs.
In 2009, seminal research by Julie Selwyn, Joe Sempik, Peter Thurston and Dinithi Wijedasa (from the Hadley Centre for Adoption and Foster Care Studies, School for Policy Studies, University of Bristol and the Centre for Child and Family Research, Loughborough University) found that the costs of placing a child with an adoptive family were around £35-37,000. At the time, VAAs were charging around £23,000 for a placement.
In the 15 years since the study, the interagency fee currently being charged is just over £39,000. This is significantly less than the estimate provided by Selwyn et al. taking into consideration inflationary increases in the past 15 years.
Inflationary increases – timeline
The fee to place with any agency (voluntary or statutory) was £27,000 from 2011 to 2018. This ‘level playing field’ was agreed by ADCS, LGA and CVAA and supported the placement of thousands of children with adopters across the UK.
In June 2018, after consultation with our members, CVAA raised the fee for the first time in 7 years. ADCS and LGA did not feel able to agree to this increase; consequently there has not been a ‘level playing field’ since June 2018, and data shows that children are now waiting longer for a placement.
CVAA raised the fee with the support of the VAAs because the value of the fee had been significantly eroded by inflation and was well below the cost of providing a placement. This was unsustainable for both the VAA sector and the wider adoption system.