Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what estimate she has made of the cost to local authorities in England of using independent fostering agencies in each of the last five years.

Local council expenditure on independent (including private and voluntary) fostering service providers has been between 45 and 47 per cent of the total expenditure on fostering services between 2011 and 2016. This information can be found in the attached table. The 2016-17 data will be published in December.