Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, which local authority incurred the (a) highest and (b) lowest average weekly cost of placing a child in the care system in the last 12 months for which figures are available.

Local authority funding for the provision of children’s services is provided by the Department for Communities and Local Government. However, local authorities are required to submit annual budget and outturn statements about their spending to the Secretary of State for Education.

The most recent outturn figures can be found at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/section-251-outturn-2014-to-2015-data

The file named “S251 outturn 2014 to 2015: individual LA expenditure data” enables reported annual expenditure by each local authority to be viewed at an individual local authority level. Total local authority expenditure on looked after children is broken down across a number of areas including, for example, total expenditure on residential care, fostering services, and leaving care support services.

Average total annual local authority expenditure per looked after child per week by authority can be approximated by using information on total annual expenditure and on the number of looked after children in each authority.

These figures can be found in the Local Authority Interactive Tool (LAIT). This shows average weekly expenditure per child week for England as a whole and for each local authority. It can be found in the children’s service finance section, at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/local-authority-interactive-tool-lait