Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will make an assessment of the potential impact of response times from Social Work England for complains about social workers.

The department is the sponsor department for Social Work England, and as such we monitor their performance on an ongoing basis. Social Work England is also regulated by the Professional Standards Authority.

The government has a statutory obligation to appoint an independent person to review the operation of Part 2 of the Children and Social Work Act 2017, which includes powers related to Social Work England. The review, chaired by Dame Annie Hudson, will collect evidence of Social Work England’s overall effectiveness and efficiency of its core regulatory functions. Further details will be announced in due course, and on completion, the report will be laid before Parliament.