Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, pursuant to the Answer of 23 April 2018 to Question 136295 on Children’s Centres: Closures, what assessment has been made of the potential merits of requiring local authorities to report children’s centre closures in real time.

As indicated in my answer to question 136295, the current children’s centre statutory guidance says that local councils should update their children’s centre data on a regular basis to reflect any changes to provision. We believe that this is fit for purpose and do not believe it is necessary to place an explicit requirement on local authorities to report children’s centre closures in ‘real time’.