Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if he will make it his policy to require local authorities to record and publish the number of families they support through Section 17 of the Children Act (1989), including reasons for the support; and if he will make a statement.
There are no plans to require local authorities to publish this information.
All local authorities in England are required to record and submit detailed data through the annual children in need census. This is published by the department at both national and local authority level. It includes data on both primary needs for assessment and on prevalent factors at the end of the assessment and is available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/characteristics-of-children-in-need-2020-to-2021.