Local Authority Children’s Services

Will Forster Excerpts

Wednesday 28th January 2026 Westminster Hall

[Mr Will Forster (Woking) (LD)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered children’s services in local authorities.

I applied for this debate because of a 10-year-old constituent who was abused, tortured and murdered by those who should have loved and protected her. Her name was Sara.

Sara was found dead in the early hours of 10 August 2023. Her body was covered in bruises. She had a traumatic head injury, human bite marks and multiple broken bones, and she had been burned by a domestic iron. Next to Sara’s body, the police found plastic bags, packing tape and a cricket bat, all with Sara’s blood on them. The people who did that to Sara deserve a special place in hell. Sara’s death was not a one-off tragedy; it was the most extreme and horrific consequence of children’s services being hollowed out, fragmented and weakened over the years. Surrey county council is failing children left, right and centre.

Another example is what happened to my constituent Julia. She and her husband pleaded with Surrey county council for help with their daughter, Eloise, who had special educational needs. Surrey ignored those pleas and refused to give Eloise special educational needs and disabilities support, and eventually it took the parents to court because it was concerned that they were a safeguarding risk to their daughter. The court saw through that and sided with the parents. It said that it was Surrey’s lack of support for special educational needs that was failing the child, not the parents. Appallingly, Surrey tried to cover up its problems with special educational needs provision and push it on to a safeguarding failure.

Judith, another of my Woking constituents, was breaking up with her partner following many incidents of domestic and child abuse. She feared for her children’s safety if they continued to see their father. On the advice of Surrey county council, the family court gave the father visitation rights, and heartbreaking abuse followed. The court then took away the father’s right to see the children. That is why we need to end the presumption in favour of parental contact. Abusers should not care for their children. Surrey now insists that the father start seeing the children again. It says that it has a duty to explore whether contact would be safe by reintroducing the children to him. It looks like Surrey is rolling the dice and creating situations in which children can be harmed. This is supposed to be one of the most affluent areas of the country, and yet this is what our services—the services for my most vulnerable constituents—are like.

The day before Sara was murdered, Surrey’s children’s services turned up at the wrong house due to an administrative error. In another case, the council failed to show up to a promised meeting about a child’s care. As a result, the child did not get the support they needed—there are real-life consequences for Surrey’s incompetence.

In November 2025, the child safeguarding practice review that I called for into Sara’s murder was finally released, and it confirmed exactly what I feared: the state, and especially Surrey county council, failed Sara at every stage. All the warning signs were there, but they were not acted upon. The authorities were fully aware that Sara was at risk. She was placed on a child protection plan before her birth, yet was a victim of domestic abuse from that day onwards. Surrey social workers wanted to take her away from her father, but they changed their mind, and the consequences will haunt us all.

After Sara’s murder, the senior officer responsible for children’s services at Surrey county council, Rachael Wardell, was offered and accepted a pay rise of £8,700. I do not know how that woman can sleep at night. It sends a message that failure carries no consequences; in fact, it is rewarded.

The safeguarding review highlighted that there were national issues as well. Children’s services in one in five local authorities across the country are not good enough, according to Ofsted. There is a range of spending across local authorities. York spends £35 million and its children’s services are rated outstanding, but just down the road, Bradford—which, I admit, is slightly larger—spends £262 million and its children’s services are rated as inadequate.

[Gideon Amos (Taunton and Wellington) (LD)]

My hon. Friend is speaking about very serious issues, and I commend him for not apportioning blame to one side or the other; he understands that, in different circumstances, there are different reasons to blame. The Government’s removal of the funding uplift for the most remote authorities will have an effect on children’s services, as it will on SEND provision and a whole range of council services. In Somerset, for example, it is 53% more expensive to provide home-to-school transport than in an average authority, yet the funding uplift has been removed. Does he agree that that is a shocking way to treat our most remote authorities?

[Mr Forster]

I do. Funding is an issue; I am concerned that we are not properly resourcing our children’s services departments. The Government’s recent decision to shift funding away from rural constituencies like my hon. Friend’s could have a dramatic impact, and the Government need to recognise that in different parts of the country, there are different funding challenges. Obviously, a suburban-urban seat like mine has challenges, but it will clearly be easier and cheaper to travel around than his.

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making an important speech on behalf of his most vulnerable constituents. Does he agree that rural and sparsely populated authorities can deliver good-quality children’s services only if special educational needs provision, health integration and transportation are treated as national responsibilities and not afterthoughts, as they so often are? On the funding piece, Westmorland and Furness council is receiving funding of £535 per head this year. In three years’ time, it will be £380 per head—a 29% cut in three years. Does he share my fear that that puts the safety of our children, particularly our most vulnerable ones, at risk?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Forster]

I completely agree, and that is why I called for this debate. We are not spending enough on vulnerable children, and that funding cut in Westmorland is absolutely shocking.

I highlighted the example of York and Bradford, which are two cities in the same region. We need to end the postcode lottery on the lives of children. Children should not be living with that abuse, neglect and fear, but in the awful situations where they are, we need local authority children’s services to have their back and step in to protect them.

Nowhere is that failure more despicable than in Conservative-run Surrey county council. My county council’s children’s services were rated good by Ofsted in March 2025—a decision that many fellow MPs, constituents and people across Surrey find bonkers. This “good” rating is clearly a thin veneer that covers up the rot within. Sixty-six local authorities in England are rated good. Based on what I know and what I have just said about Surrey, if that is good, what on earth is happening in the rest of the country? The Children’s Commissioner has been clear about this: her research shows huge regional disparities in child in need plans. In some areas, children receive early intervention and regular check-ups. In others, we see pointless bureaucracy, long waits and a revolving door of social workers who are poorly trained and supported.

Children’s services in local authorities cannot protect children because of significant loopholes in the home education system, as highlighted by Sara’s safeguarding review. It proved that Sara’s murderers used those loopholes to hide the abuse. When they could no longer hide the abuse from the school, Sara’s father and stepmother took her out of school, saying that they would homeschool her. The school could do nothing about that. The abuse continued—and there were tragic consequences.

The Liberal Democrats have long campaigned for a homeschool register to ensure that we know where the hundreds of homeschooled children across the country are and that they are safe. Some of them have never attended school—not once. We need a register of children not in school. That is backed by the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children and by the Children’s Commissioner, who have said that it would be an important step and tool to keep children safe.

Homeschooling can be hugely advantageous, and parents have a right to choose it, but we need a register and, above all, parents should lose the right to homeschool if there are safeguarding concerns. It is clear from Sara’s safeguarding review that repeated failures to share information are one of the key barriers to keeping children safe. The Liberal Democrats have been campaigning on this for years. We need to provide joined-up support to meet children’s needs. The mechanism is known as the single unique identifier, and it would help to ensure that there are no more appalling safeguarding cases like the ones I have highlighted.

Every area in our country needs to have a multi-agency safeguarding hub, so that all organisations can work together, share vital information and, above all, protect children. A key example of the need for that is Sara’s father and murderer. He was a taxi driver who passed a Disclosure and Barring Service check. He got his licence through Woking borough council—the licensing authority in my area—yet Surrey county council’s children’s services knew that he was a child abuser. It was foreseeable that he would be driving around children with special educational needs or other vulnerable people, including for Surrey county council, as it uses taxi drivers for home-to-school transport. Why are we risking vulnerable children’s lives because the computer says no? We need to share that information.

This Government’s recent spending review agreed a real-terms cut in the grant to local authorities for children’s services—that is appalling. We should not be cutting that funding; we should not be putting a price on a child’s life.

I have a number of asks to the Minister. We need better joined-up public services where information is shared quickly and effectively to prevent children from being put at risk. We need to ensure that local authorities are well equipped to deal with the upcoming changes in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, so that no child falls through the cracks. Does the Minister agree that something is clearly wrong in Surrey? I urge him to put Surrey county council’s children services in special measures.

I know that Surrey county council is to be abolished, and I am pleased that it is, but children’s lives are at risk now. We cannot wait for local government reorganisation. Surrey’s failures must have consequences for its leadership, not for my vulnerable constituents. From April of next year, my area will have a new local authority: West Surrey council. I do not want Surrey county council’s record of mismanagement and poor culture of serving the public to be transferred to the new local authority. That is why I urge the Minister to intervene to protect vulnerable children like Sara in Woking and across Surrey.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Forster]

It has been a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship today, Mr Western. I called this debate for several reasons: to highlight the failures of Surrey county council and call for its children’s services to be put into special measures, to push for national changes to keep children safe, and to give parliamentary colleagues the chance to raise their constituency stories about children’s services in local authorities. I believe I have done that.

The Government are taking action. The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill should make some progress on child safeguarding, but I urge the Government to go further and faster in taking action to protect vulnerable children. I am pleased by and want to thank everyone for their kind words—I think we have had 15 speakers today. There are 15 recommendations from the Sara Sharif safeguarding report. I will continue to campaign to ensure that Sara’s legacy is that she is the last person who was killed by people who should have loved and cared for her.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered children’s services in local authorities.