Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what recent estimate his Department has made of the number of Sure Start centres that have (a) closed and (b) reduced the services they provide since 2010.

Based on the information supplied by local authorities as of 31 August 2021, there were 3,000 Sure Start children's centres and sites open to families and children providing children's centre services as part of a network. A total of 637 centres had closed since 2010[1]. The department does not routinely collect data on the services provided by children’s centres. This data is held at a local level.

[1] Source: This is based on information supplied by local authorities on the number of children’s centres in their area to Get Information about Schools (GIAS) database about the location of https://www.get-information-schools.service.gov.uk and internal management information held by the department as of 31 August 2021. These figures may be different to previous answers and could change again in future since local authorities may update their data at any time. The GIAS collects data on children’s centres that local authorities have closed on a permanent basis. It does not collect data on children’s centres that local authorities may have closed temporarily in response to the COVID-19 outbreak.