Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many looked after children local authorities reported as being placed outside of (a) their local authority area and (b) England in the year January 2020 to December 2020 inclusive.

The latest figures on children looked after by the locality of the placement are shown in the attached table. The children looked after collection (SSDA903 return) collects information about children who are looked after by local authorities from 1 April to the 31 March each year and these are the time periods presented in the attached table. Figures have been provided for the years ending 31 March 2020 and 31 March 2021.

A range of figures on children looked after by placement location in a different format to that provided in the table are published in the table ‘National – Children looked after by placement type, distance and the locality of placement’ in the annual statistical release available here: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/children-looked-after-in-england-including-adoptions.