The Department for Education’s (DfE) statutory guidance on agency social work came into effect on 31 October 2024 before becoming a legal requirement from 1 October 2025. Central to the reforms are measures such as capped pay rates, longer notice requirements, and a restriction on hiring workers who have recently left an agency post in the same region. By tightening these arrangements, the DfE aims to reduce churn in the workforce, helping to create more consistency for staff and better outcomes for children and families.
One of the most notable differences in the way in which the DfE’s rules and guidance have been implemented in Yorkshire & the Humber has been the timescale, with the decision made to implement these ten months before authorities were legally required to do so. In preparation for this, engagement work with agency workers and providers first began in September 2024 before authorities adopted the DfE guidance and rules in January 2025, with a transition period of three-months on price caps. The thinking behind this was in large part, to focus minds and create some lead-in time to iron out any issues before the national deadline.
As a result, the region has already seen a dramatic reduction in the number of full-time equivalent agency workers; down from 512 in September 2024, to 306 by the end of June 2025. Regional leaders say that feedback from their counterparts in other parts of the country, who have also introduced similar changes ahead of time, indicates that they too are seeing positive results as the changes take effect; a trend which they believe will become increasingly apparent in the coming months.
The decision to adopt the DfE statutory guidance in January formed part of a regional Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), The agreement commits them to working collaboratively, sharing information and overseeing compliance through a regional governance group. It also standardises vetting and referencing procedures and sets expectations for agency staff to maintain an on-site presence as required to meet the needs of the role. In addition, the MoU commits all authorities to fully apply each of the DfE’s guidelines as “musts” rather than “shoulds”.
We sat down with Nicola Curley, lead Director for Workforce regionally and Rotherham’s Director of Children and Young People's Services (DCS) to reflect on what the implementation of the MoU has meant for the region, but also why the decision to “go early” on the DfE’s statutory guidance was too good an opportunity for her and her counterparts to pass up:
“The announcement of a national shake-up of the agency workforce provided an opportunity to pursue an agenda which had been on the table regionally for some time. I think what we felt with the new guidance coming from DfE, was it gave us a real opportunity to refresh and grip what was an incredibly challenging problem for us all. We wanted to take advantage of the new statutory guidance, but also really push forward with what we wanted to do as a region anyway, and what we thought would be of most benefit to everyone in the region. This was not the first time we had tried to introduce a regional MoU, but previously this had proved to be unworkable. So learning from this, particularly around balancing a need for flexibility with the need to maintain consistency, was critical in getting the new agreement right. We recognised that this wasn't going to be a “snap your fingers, it’ll be perfect on day one” scenario. We wanted to give ourselves enough time to get things in place. We also have a very varied region: For a local authority that doesn't have any agency staff, the MoU may have limited impact. But for an authority that has lots of agency staff, it can be incredibly helpful.”
Accounting for the variation between partner authorities was perhaps the biggest early hurdle to overcome. Authorities within the region had different proportions of agency workers, and different rates of pay. For Nicola, much of the early success of the agreement has been down to the buy-in at senior level, and the conversations which laid the groundwork for an arrangement that suited everyone:
“As with everything, you only have so many hours in a day. So, the initial agreement of the DCS group was that we did need to put real time and energy into making this work. We set up a task and finish group, which was very ably led by some of our Assistant Directors, and they worked incredibly hard to negotiate agreements across the area.”
Another early question to answer was how best to support the partner authorities with the biggest task ahead of them. A lot of the discussions centred around the need for a fair process and an agreement that there would have to be a small number of exceptions in the early days of the MoU. On the one hand, the rules had to incentivise authorities to stay within the agreed limits. On the other, the authorities who would stand to benefit the most were also the ones who would be facing the biggest struggle to turn things around.
"The big challenge for us is that we did have two local authorities who were, at the time, rated inadequate by Ofsted and had very high numbers of agency staff. I think the big game changer was that we had a very mature conversation about how to support those two local authorities to move into the MoU. When you have an agreed exemption in place, with clear timescales, that’s completely different to a breach where someone is just not following the rules."
These early efforts to manage expectations and bring everyone along at a similar pace are certainly paying off now. Overall numbers of agency posts across the region are already coming down to more manageable levels, even in the authorities that had the highest levels of temporary workers.
“Across the region, we had 512 full-time equivalent agency workers in September 2024. We implemented our MoU in January 2025, allowing a three month ‘transition’ period to move all agency staff on the new agreed pay rates and contractual arrangements and by the end of June, we were down to 306. That's an incredibly significant reduction. It’s not that we don’t have those jobs any more either - we've not deleted 206 posts! What we've been able to do is convert agency staff to permanent staff and enhance our permanent recruitment.”
Nicola was also keen to stress that agency social work would always have a critical role within the workforce as a way to ensure talented practitioners were on hand at short notice. For her, the major benefit of the DfE statutory guidance and MoU has been in giving local authorities more options to decide when this is the best solution, rather than having a scenario where the use of temporary contracts spirals out of control:
“I don't think anybody's suggesting that we would never use agency staff or that we don't see a value in agency staff. I think the issue for us as a region is that what we want is to have choices. I think we’ve really turned the tide here in Yorkshire & the Humber. We’re very pleased about that and how we’ve significantly slowed down the churn.”
The benefits at authority and regional level are clear for employers, staff, and most importantly the families they work with. In addition to cost savings, the continuity that a stable level of agency work can bring is associated with better outcomes for children and young people; a trend which will undoubtedly be reflected nationally with the introduction of the DfE’s new rules and guidance. From a regional perspective, Nicola feels that the collaborative work on the MoU has helped to build a shared culture, and is part of a wider trend towards stronger cooperation between local authorities:
“I think we've moved up a league. The region is in a very strong position. I chose to come and work in Yorkshire and Humber, and I would highly recommend it to anybody! It's a lovely place to work, the families and the people are incredible. The region itself offers a strong ethos of collaboration and cooperation together. I think that’s starting to show, people can feel it now.”
