Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, pursuant to the Answer of 8 June 2015 to Question 1001, how the assessment will be undertaken and when the assessment of costs and savings to local government will be completed.

Creating regional adoption agencies will improve the efficiency of adoption services and increase the scale at which services are operating. This is expected to lead to longer term savings for local authorities through efficiency gains as they realise economies of scale, and deliver improvements in the timeliness of adoptions. The Department for Education is providing £4.5 million in order to support the transition to regional adoption agencies in 2015-16.

As part of this work, the department will assess and evaluate the costs and savings resulting from the measures. We have asked local authorities and voluntary adoption agencies to give us an early indication of the financial and practical support they expect to need for transition by the end of July, and have invited expressions of interest to be submitted by 7 September.