Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how much funding his Department allocated to place children under 16 in (a) unregulated and (b) unregistered care settings in each of the last five financial years.

The information is not held centrally. Core funding for children’s services, including funding for placing looked-after children, is un-ring-fenced and part of the wider local government finance settlement. It is for local authorities to decide how best to spend the funding to meet their local needs, priorities and statutory responsibilities, including for children’s social care.

The local government settlement for 2020-21 set out proposals to increase local government resources by 4.4% above inflation, which is the largest increase in spending power in almost a decade. Under these proposals, core spending power will rise from £46.2 billion in 2019-20 to £49.1 billion in 2020-21.

We recognise the demand pressures on children’s social care. The government is providing local authorities with an additional £1 billion for adult and children’s social care in every year of this Parliament.