Current fees (From January 2024)
£400.00 – First time submission or resubmission more than a year after original (or last, if previously submitted) assessment
£225.00 – For resubmission within a year of the original (or last, if previously submitted) assessment
£40.00 – Missing document fee. The document must be submitted within 14 days of request.
£40.00 – Where a portfolio is returned by the FMC office to the mediator for issues of anonymisation to be address, or because it is incomplete.
Annual increases will apply from 2025 onwards
Portfolio fee changes from September 2023
Portfolio fees have remained unchanged since 2016, over which time the cost of assessment has increased. It can take up to a day for an FMC assessor to assess a portfolio, and although payments to assessors are not made at commercial rates, the costs of assessment have increased over the last eight years with the result that the portfolio system is no longer self-funding but is subsidised by the FMC’s other income, which largely comes from the family mediation community. The existing system also makes no distinction between resubmissions which are received promptly and those that are received more than a year after a provisional award for FMCA is made, when there is a significant difference in the amount of work that needs to be carried out to assess these submissions. The current system also makes no distinction between the fees charged for portfolios that are received as complete and that can therefore be assessed, and those that have to be returned; in the latter case, the amount of administration involved increases.
FMC is therefore introducing a new charging structure for portfolios, which more accurately reflects the work that needs to be done to process portfolios and carry out assessments.
The FMC will increase portfolio fees in stages, starting in September 2023 and then again on 1 January each year thereafter. The FMC will endeavour to keep portfolio fees as low as possible, whilst ensuring the payments it makes to assessors are sufficient to ensure assessors feel valued for the important work they carry out – at a substantial discount.
