Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many Sure Start centres have closed in each year since 2010.

Since 18 September 2017, data on Sure Start children’s centres has been supplied by local authorities via the department’s Get Information about Schools database portal at: https://www.get-information-schools.service.gov.uk/.

Based on information supplied by local authorities as at end June 2019, the number of children’s centres open to families and children each year and the number of children’s centres closed each year since 2010 is set out in the attached table[1]:

[1]Figures in the table are based on information supplied by local authorities as at end June 2019. Since local authorities can update historical data at any time, figures may be different to previous answers, and are likely to change again in future. (Closures reported since June 2019 have not been included in the table to enable consistency with a statistical publication with further analysis of children’s centre numbers, which is due to be published on 7 November – for completeness a total of 9 closures have not been included in the table.) The department holds some of its information on children’s centre numbers for previous years manually. The numbers of children’s centres open each year have been treated as estimates and rounded to the nearest 10.