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, (b) England and (c) the UK in (i) the year January 2019 to December 2019 inclusive and (ii) each of the last five annual reporting periods for which data is available.

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 31 March, and these are the time periods presented in the table.

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 at: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/children-looked-after-in-england-including-adoptions/2020.

The statistics on children looked after in 2020/21 will be released in November 2021 (provisional). The exact date of publication will be announced here: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/announcements/looked-after-children-in-england-year-ending-31-march-2021.