DBS fees fell on 5 October 2026
Every DBS fee went down on 5 October 2026. It was the first reduction in years, it is small, and it landed in the middle of the autumn recruitment season. Here is exactly what changed, what did not, and what it means for an organisation that re-checks on a cycle.
The new fees
| What you are paying for | Until 4 October | From 5 October | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Basic check | £21.50 | £20.00 | −£1.50 |
| Standard check | £21.50 | £20.00 | −£1.50 |
| Enhanced check | £49.50 | £41.00 | −£8.50 |
| Update Service, per year | £16.00 | £15.00 | −£1.00 |
| Volunteer check | Free | Free | No change |
| Update Service for a volunteer | Free | Free | No change |
Source: DBS announcement on GOV.UK. These are the DBS's own statutory fees. We charge them at cost and make nothing on them.
What did not change
The DBS fee is only part of what a check costs you, and it is the only part that fell.
- Your provider's admin fee. Umbrella bodies and registered bodies set their own charge on top, commonly somewhere between £8 and £15, and some charge separately for identity verification. Nothing obliged them to pass the DBS reduction on, and nothing stopped them raising their own fee at the same time. Ask yours for their price in writing.
- VAT. The DBS's own fee does not carry VAT. Your provider's admin fee generally does. If your invoice shows one VAT figure across the whole lot, it is worth asking them to itemise it.
- Staff time. Chasing identity documents, getting a form completed correctly, resolving a query and filing the certificate is roughly three quarters of an hour per person for most organisations. At £15 an hour that is £11.25, and it did not move.
- Eligibility. Who may be checked at which level is set by law and was untouched by a fee change. A cheaper Enhanced check is not an invitation to run one on somebody who does not qualify for it.
What it actually saves
Put the pieces together for a single Enhanced re-check of a paid member of staff, on the new fees:
| DBS fee | £41.00 |
| Provider admin and identity fees, including VAT | £19.02 |
| 45 minutes of staff time at £15 an hour | £11.25 |
| Total | £71.27 |
The DBS fee is about 58% of that, and the reduction (£8.50 a check) is worth about 12% of it. For an organisation re-checking 40 paid staff on a 3-year cycle, the change is worth roughly £113 a year. 100 staff, about £283 a year. Real money, and not the number that decides anything.
For a charity whose people are volunteers, the fee change is worth nothing at all, because volunteer checks and volunteer Update Service subscriptions were already free. The entire cost of a volunteer re-check is the staff time, which is exactly the part that did not fall.
Which fee applied to a check submitted around the date
The DBS told registered bodies to have their systems and published prices updated before 5 October, but it did not publish a rule for an application that was submitted before the date and processed after it. Practice varied between providers. If you had a check in flight in the first week of October, ask your provider which fee they charged you rather than assuming.
Three things worth doing now
- Correct your own published figures. If you are an agency, a membership body or a tutoring organisation that quotes a DBS price to your own customers, check that your website, your rate card and your onboarding emails now show the new fees. This is the job people forget until a customer points it out.
- Get your provider's current price in writing. One email. The answer tells you whether the reduction reached you or stopped with them.
- Revisit the Update Service decision. The subscription is £15.00 a year. A fresh re-check on a 3-year cycle costs £71.27 all in, so over 3 years that is £45.00 of subscription against £71.27 for one re-check, a difference of £26.27 in the subscription's favour, and the subscription is free for volunteers. It is also what makes a daily status check possible. If you are still re-checking on a calendar rather than monitoring status, the arithmetic still favours the Update Service, though by a little less than before, because the check fell by more than the subscription did.
Where the Update Service fits
The Update Service is the DBS's own subscription that keeps a certificate live. Once somebody is on it, an organisation that is legally entitled to check them, and has their permission, can ask the DBS whether their certificate is still current. That status check is free and the answer is immediate, and our guide to how to run a DBS Update Service status check takes you through it. How Daily DBS runs that check every morning is set out step by step, and the FAQs answer the questions we hear most. It tells you only whether the certificate remains current as no further information has been identified since its issue, or is no longer current — never what any information is.
Two details catch people out. The individual has to subscribe themselves, either during the application or within 30 days of the certificate being issued; nobody can do it for them, and once the window closes the only route back is a fresh check. And a subscription that lapses stops working silently — the certificate does not expire, it simply stops being something you can verify.
The honest limit: a status check confirms the certificate you already hold is still current, which is what the Update Service exists for. Some regulators, funders and contracts specify a fresh check at a fixed interval regardless, and a status check does not satisfy that. Read your own obligations before you drop a renewal cycle.
The fee is not the expensive part
Daily DBS checks every person on your list against the Update Service every morning and emails you the day something changes. Fourteen days free, no card.