Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many places existed for children and young people under 18 years old needing to be housed in a secure accommodation unit for each year for which data is available since 2010.

The number of children entering the youth justice system for the first time continues to decline year on year and we now have a concentrated mix of young people in custody – many of whom demonstrate very challenging and complex behaviour.

We are investing an additional £64m to improve youth custody, including boosting the number of frontline staff in public sector Young Offender Institutions by 20% - all of whom will be specially trained to work in the youth estate.

The table below shows the number of commissioned beds for the youth estate in England and Wales for the years ending March 2010 to March 2017.

*These figures have been drawn from administrative IT systems which, as with any large scale recording system, are subject to possible errors with data entry and processing and can be subject to change over time.