Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, which local authorities do not own a children's residential care home.

Regarding data on which local authorities do not own a children’s residential care home, this is a matter for Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector, Amanda Spielman. I have asked her to write to the Honourable Member and a copy of her reply will be placed in the Libraries of both Houses.

Regarding the annual cost of providing residential care to children, local authorities are required to submit annual outturn statements about their spending on children’s services, including spend on residential care, to my right hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Education.

This financial data collection asks for local authority annual expenditure to be split across the following categories:

• Own provision: expenditure on services provided or managed by the authority
• Private: expenditure on services provided or managed by private sector entities such as profit-making companies
• Other public: expenditure on services provided or managed by public sector entities such as other local authorities and other public providers (such as services provided by other local authorities or health bodies)
• Voluntary: expenditure on services provided or managed by third sector entities such as voluntary and community groups, social enterprises, charities, cooperatives and mutuals.

More information on the collection, including the provision captured within ‘residential care’, can be found in the outturn guide for local authorities at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/section-251-2017-to-2018.

The most recent published outturn data is for 2017-18 and can be found at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/la-and-school-expenditure-2017-to-2018-financial-year.

The table below shows total annual expenditure on residential care across all local authorities in England in 2017-18 across the provision categories defined above.

Total local authority expenditure on residential care by placement provider for 2017-18: