Question to the Department for Education:

To ask His Majesty's Government whether the £90 million of funding announced in the Autumn Budget for children’s homes is new funding; how many places will be funded; and where those places will be located.

The Autumn Budget and Spending Review 2024 represented HM Government’s decisions on future spending in the context of the unfunded pressures, across both capital and resource spend, which the new government inherited in July and which my right hon. Friend, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, set out.

The government has decided to invest further in supporting the development of children’s social care. £86 million of the £90 million funding announced in the Autumn Budget for 2025/26 represents the decision to invest in the Children’s Homes capital programme to maintain capacity and expand provision in secure and open residential children’s homes. The remaining £4 million will support smaller capital initiatives linked to the new government’s wider ambition to reform of children’s social care.

The programme will support the provision of up to 550 open children’s home placements nationwide, including a new bidding round launched to increase provision for children with complex needs.

The programme is intending to support the provision of around 80 additional secure children’s home placements nationwide. Currently, this includes the building of new or replacement homes in Lincolnshire, Devon, Hampshire, and in London and West Midlands regions. There will be improvement works undertaken at other existing homes nationwide that may expand provision.