Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many people have been approved as adopters in each of the last 10 years.

The Adoption Leadership Board (ALB) quarterly survey shows the number of approvals of adoptive families by local councils and voluntary adoption agencies in England from quarter 4 2013-14. The reports are published here:

https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/adoption-system-performance.

Table 1: The number of adoptive families who were approved for adoption, in England

Source: ALB quarterly survey

The latest quarterly data shows that there were 1,410 adoptive families approved in the first two quarters of 2016-17.

This refers to adoptive families rather than people as these are the groups of people available to adopt a child. We do not hold information prior to quarter 4 2013-14.

Figures for the number of approved adoptive families at 31 March 2013 and 2014 can be found in the Ofsted adoption publications here: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/childrens-social-care-statistics.