Question to the Department for Education:

To ask His Majesty's Government how much they have paid for private companies to look after children in unregistered care homes in each of the last three years for which such information is available.

All homes which wholly or mainly look after children must be registered with Ofsted, to ensure effective oversight and inspection of homes where children in care live. Those which provide healthcare may also need to be registered with CQC.

The use of unregistered provision reflects shortages of suitable registered provision in some areas, particularly for children with complex needs. The government has made available £53 million in match-grant funding for local authorities to create up to 200 new placements for children with complex needs by 2029, helping to address sufficiency gaps.

Ofsted have published criteria to prioritise applications to register homes that: address local need; receive departmental capital funding; or provide highly specialist care for children with complex needs and disabilities.

To improve transparency, the 2026 annual data return submitted by local authorities (SSDA903) will include a category for unregistered placements to help build a national dataset of this provision.

Regional Care Cooperatives will help reduce reliance on unregistered provision by improving regional sufficiency planning, commissioning and market oversight, enabling more children to access the right registered homes in the right place.