The Datum Report

Occupation 1172 · Managers, directors and senior officials

Social services managers and directors

Half of full-time social services managers and directors in the UK earn more than £48,549 a year, and half earn less.

Social services managers and directors plan, organise, direct and co-ordinate the resources and commission the services necessary to protect the welfare of certain groups within local authorities including children and young people, families under stress, people with disabilities, elderly people and people needing help as a result of illness.

How people enter it

Entry is usually through internal promotion for those with the appropriate professional qualifications and relevant experience. Post-qualifying professional qualifications and in-service training are available.

What the work involves

• provides leadership and management to ensure services are delivered in accordance with statutory requirements and in line with the local authority social services department’s policies and procedures
• determines staffing, financial, material and other short and long-term needs
• plans work schedules, assigns tasks and delegates responsibilities of social services staff
• monitors and evaluates departmental performance with a view to improving social service provision
• studies and advises upon changes in legislation that will impact upon social service provision
• liaises with representatives of other relevant agencies

Also called

Children's centre manager · Commissioner (local government: social services) · Community services manager · Service manager (welfare services) · Social work manager

What it pays

How pay has changed

Median gross annual pay for social services managers and directors, full-time employees, 2023 to 2025. Each point is that year's ASHE April snapshot as published — revisions are not backfilled into earlier years, and a year ONS withheld is a gap rather than a joined line.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Table

Year-on-year change

The change from each year to the next, in per cent, computed from the figures in the chart above — so the two cannot disagree.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Table

Pay by region

Median gross annual pay for full-time employees, ranked, against the UK figure. 5 of 11 regions are published: ONS withholds a cell where the survey sample cannot support it, and those are shown as gaps rather than dropped — an absent region is not a region without the work in it.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Period 2025. Table

Every regional figure

ONS does not publish occupational pay below region. Cells the survey could not support are shown as withheld, with its reason — adding a region split to a specific occupation leaves roughly a tenth of cells publishable.

Common questions

Classified alongside this

Health services and public health managers and directors