Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many Sure Start centres there were in South Yorkshire in (a) May 2010 and (b) September 2014.

Local authorities in the South Yorkshire area listed their children’s centres on the Sure Start children’s centre database as follows.

Additional sites are places open to families and children providing Children's Centre services as part of a network. They were formerly children's centres in their own right and, while they no longer meet the statutory definition of a Children’s Centre, they remain open offering access to some of the early childhood services on behalf of another children's centre.

The April 2010 data was published in the statistical release in June 2010.[1]

The number of children’s centres at 30 September 2014 is taken from the ‘Sure Start On’ database that is maintained by local authorities and is Ofsted’s main source of information for arranging inspection of children’s centres.

Statistics on children’s centre numbers were last published by the Department on 30 April and relate to data at 28 February and include the numbers for each local authority.[2]

The data from the ‘Sure Start On’ database informs the Directgov children’s centre finder which enables the public to find their nearest children’s centre using a post code search. [3]

[1] www.gov.uk/government/publications/numbers-of-sure-start-childrens-centres-april-2010

[2] www.childrenscentresfinder.direct.gov.uk/snapshot-childrens-centre/

[3] www.childrenscentresfinder.direct.gov.uk/childrenscentresfinder/