Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, with reference to the consultation on Changes to the adoption and children regulations: coronavirus (COVID-19), how his Department defines campaign response when considering submissions to a public consultation; and if he will provide the list of respondents who indicated that they represented an organisation in their response that consultation who were subsequently counted as an individual response in the outcome document.

On 24 April 2020, the Adoption and Children Coronavirus (Amendment) Regulations 2020 were introduced to provide local authorities and children’s social care providers with temporary flexibilities to support them to focus on core safeguarding duties during the COVID-19 outbreak. The regulations lapsed on 25 September 2020.

Between 16 July and 5 August 2020, we sought views on those regulations that the government proposed should lapse and those that may be extended for continued use to 31 March 2021. The majority of responses were in favour of extending individual regulations on medical reports, virtual visits, and Ofsted inspections and all other temporary flexibilities should lapse.

Departmental officials informed me on 8 September 2020 that we needed to update our consultation response to include all emailed responses against all questions in addition to responses received directly through our consultation website.

The respondents defined as campaign responses in this consultation disclosed that they were part of a campaign and all responses were then included in the results. Respondents indicated how they would like their response to be counted (as an individual or as an organisation). Where respondents identified that they were happy to be made public, they have been listed in the consultation response.

Please see the attached table for the breakdown of types of respondents to the proposal to extend regulations on the frequency of children’s social care inspections.