Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what plans her Department has to assess the funding needs for the (a) measures relating to local authority adoption functions, (b) measures relating to joint arrangements and (c) other measures that her Department plans to include in the Education and Adoption Bill.

The move to regional adoption agencies will improve the efficiency of adoption services and increase the scale at which services operate. This is expected to lead to savings for local authorities through efficiency gains as they benefit from economies of scale and through improvements in the timeliness of adoptions. The Department for Education is working with local authorities to encourage voluntary consolidation. The department will assess and evaluate the costs and savings resulting from the measures as part of this work. The department will also provide some financial support for transition to regional adoption agencies.

The Education and Adoption Bill also includes measures to improve the overall quality of education received by children in England. This includes streamlining the process by which failing schools become academies and introducing new powers to support and challenge coasting schools. The department is assessing the funding implications of wider intervention and meeting these costs will be considered as part of the Budget and Spending Review process.