Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
Debate between Baroness Evans of Bowes Park and Baroness Meacher(2 weeks ago)
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Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)
My Lords, I add my support to Amendment 134B, in the name of my noble friend Lady Sanderson. As she said, it seeks to build on the Government’s commitment in Keeping Children Safe, Helping Families Thrive to look at options to reform the planning process to enable providers to more easily set up homes where they are most needed and to support the delivery of small children’s homes.
To pick up another issue that noble Lords across the Committee have raised on this group of amendments, I should add that that paper also noted that the lack of appropriate and affordable homes in the right places for children means that we are seeing a worrying trend in the rise of the use of unregistered provision.
The CMA’s 2022 report on the children’s home market outlined a number of issues with the current planning system and specifically recommended that the Government do what my noble friend suggests in her amendment, and consider
“whether the distinction, for the purposes of the planning regime, between small children’s homes and domestic dwelling houses should be removed”.
The CMA concluded that the easing of planning restrictions would lead to both an increase in number and a better geographical spread of children’s homes.
On the basis that the Government have accepted this recommendation and say that they are considering options, I look forward to hearing from the Minister how government thinking has developed, particularly in relation to further planning reforms in this area. Can she outline where, if not in this Bill, they may be intending to take their action?
Baroness Meacher (CB)
My Lords, I support the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett. Having been sent to a boarding school for some years from the age of 10, it seems to me that the last place that somebody should go if they are a looked-after child, and therefore already displaced, is a boarding school. They would be shunted to one place and rejected again and shunted to another. I would be very strongly concerned that looked-after children should not be sent to a boarding school.