Children in care

Data on children in care of the local authority.

31 January 2020

Your request and our response

1. How many children who are in the care of the local authority (I.e. on a care order under s.31 Children Act 1989):

  • The total number - 195 as at 30/01/20
  • are EU, EEA or Swiss national citizens,
  • have made applications to the EU Settled Status Scheme,
  • have made applications for British Citizenship,
  • have received settled status,
  • have received pre-settled status.

2. How many children are accommodated by your local authority (i.e. under s.20 Children Act 1989):

  • The total number - 118 as at 30/01/20
  • are EU, EEA or Swiss national citizens,
  • have made applications to the EU Settled Status Scheme,
  • have made applications for British Citizenship,
  • have received settled status,
  • have received pre-settled status.

3. How many young people entitled to leaving care support (i.e. under para.19B of Schedule 2 Children Act 1989; s.23A(2) Children Act 1989; and s.23C(1) Children Act 1989):

  • The total number - 429 as at 30/01/20
  • are EU, EEA or Swiss national citizens,
  • have made applications to the EU Settled Status Scheme,
  • have made applications for British Citizenship,
  • have received settled status,
  • have received pre-settled status.

I can confirm that we have reviewed your request but consider that to comply with the request would exceed the cost/time limit specified by s12 FOIA. However, we have provided the total numbers above.

Section 12 (cost of compliance exceeds the appropriate limit)

  1. — (1) Section 1(1) does not oblige a public authority to comply with a request for information if the authority estimates that the cost of complying with the request would exceed the appropriate limit.

In this instance, we have decided that the process of determining whether the information is held will exceed the Appropriate Limit as provided by The Freedom of Information (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004.

The Appropriate Limit applies to costs/time the council reasonably expects to use in carrying out the following activities to comply with your request:

  • Determine whether the information is held
  • Locating the information or documents containing the information
  • Retrieving such information or documents
  • Extracting the information from the document

The Appropriate Limit is currently set at £450 which is the equivalent to 18 hours of work at £25 per hour.

It is estimated that to retrieve the information for this request would take at least 18 hours.

The process of retrieving and collecting the data is therefore likely to exceed the Appropriate Limit.

In accordance with Section 17 FOIA this letter represents a Refusal Notice for this request.