A Romford charity offering second-hand school uniforms for a flat £5 is quietly doing the work that policy has so far failed to complete. S.M.I.L.E. London & Essex, registered at 40 High Street, Romford, and running its annual uniform swap shop for the eighth consecutive year, reports that around 500 children pass through its doors every year, and that number is rising.
The charity, registered under number 1177989 with the Charity Commission, recorded total income of £243,538 against total expenditure of £253,992 in its most recent filing. It is spending slightly more than it raises to keep the service running. That is worth holding in mind when considering the scale of what it is absorbing.
What Second-Hand School Uniforms Actually Save
The numbers are not abstract. According to a Full Fact analysis of Department for Education data, the average cost of school uniforms and PE kit combined reached £442 for secondary school pupils and £343 for primary school pupils in the 2023/24 academic year, based on a survey of 1,207 parents and carers. That figure is the combined total; the uniform element alone averaged just under £250 and PE kit just under £140 separately.
Maria Quaife of S.M.I.L.E. London & Essex told BBC London that a new school uniform can cost around £300 to £400 per child on its own. For Ishtiaq Khan, who visited the shop with three of his six school-age children in tow, the arithmetic is direct: multiply that figure by three and the alternative becomes genuinely unmanageable.
Sandra Koli, another parent who visited, put it plainly: ‘It helps me not to be anxious, because the price is really affordable so I don’t have to worry too much. This is the right time for it, because by the end of August it will be really crowded and much more expensive, so I can relax and enjoy my summer until the school starts.’
The swap shop currently holds 1,000 items of school uniform, both branded and generic, drawn from schools across Havering, Barking and Dagenham. Families can donate items their children have grown out of and take as much as they need for £5. Shoes and football boots are also available at reduced prices. The shop runs until 22 August and accepts donations of back-to-school packs for disadvantaged families.
The Regulatory Picture Behind the Costs
PE kit costs have risen sharply over the past decade. The DfE Cost of School Uniforms Survey 2023, conducted by BMG Research across 1,207 parents and carers of children aged 4 to 16, found that average PE kit expenditure reached £139.70 in the 2023/24 period. Analysis of the DfE data by Uniformd puts that in context: the inflation-adjusted baseline for PE kit in 2015 was £115.11, meaning families are paying £24.50 more in real terms than they were nine years ago.
The same DfE survey found a rise in schools making second-hand uniforms available, and that average expenditure was lower where parents were not tied to a single supplier. That last point matters because exclusive supply arrangements have long been identified as a driver of the problem.
The Competition and Markets Authority previously called on government to introduce statutory guidance for schools on reducing uniform costs, noting that every item bought from an exclusive supplier can be £5 to £10 more expensive than one bought in a competitive market. Statutory guidance followed, enabled through a Private Members’ Bill. Progress, of a kind.
Legislation is now moving further. The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill includes measures that would ban schools from requiring parents to buy more than three branded uniform items, with secondary and middle schools permitted to require one additional branded item if it is a branded tie. Whether that cap will prove sufficient is another question: over 10% of parents surveyed by the DfE said they were already required to buy five or more branded items.
S.M.I.L.E. London & Essex is not waiting for the bill to pass. Quaife told BBC London the charity saves local families thousands of pounds each year. The swap shop closes on 22 August. After that, the branded-item levy resets, and next summer the queue will likely be longer still.
