Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, pursuant to the Answer of 10 January 2017 to Question 58097, whether any intervention from her Department in a school closure consultation subsequently led to a consultation being paused.

I refer the honourable member to my response to question 58097, which I have restated below.

The Department’s guidance on consultation sets out the minimum periods for which local authorities and academy trusts must consult, where school closure is proposed, but it does not mention pausing a consultation.

Consultation on a proposal to close a school is undertaken locally either by the local authority or the academy trust to allow those directly affected by the proposals to provide their comments.

It is up to the local authority or academy trust to decide whether a consultation needs to be paused. The Department does not record or hold this information centrally.