Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what recent assessment he has made of trends in the level of demand for local authority-provided children’s services.

The department publishes a range of statistics on children’s services and these data are available to all local authorities to help benchmark their services. This data shows that since 2013, levels of Children in Need, Children Protection Plans and Looked after Children have risen by 7.1%; 24.5% and 10.7% respectively.

The government is working between now and the Spending Review 2019 to get a sharper and more granular picture of demand for children’s services, to help ensure that local authorities have the resources they need.

We are also working with the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government on the fair funding review of relative needs and resources, which is considering levels of demand in local authorities in more detail.