Can you answer the four questions below for the most recent six full academic years for which data is available (ie. 2019/20, 2020/21, 2021/22, 2022/23, 2023/24, 2024/25).
1. For each academic year, please provide:
The total number of prosecutions initiated by the Local Authority against parents under Section 444 of the Education Act 1996 for their child’s non-attendance at school.
2019/20 – 304
2020/21 – 20
2021/22 – 57
2022/23 – 345
2023/24 – 378
2024/25 – 294
2025/26 – 232 to date
2. The number of prosecutions initiated by the Local Authority against parents under Section 444 of the Education Act 1996 for their child’s non-attendance at school, where the child concerned had an Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP) at the time the prosecution was initiated.
Section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 makes provision for public authorities to refuse requests for information where the cost of compliance would exceed the appropriate limit, which for local government is set at £450 or 18 hours of officer time. As the information requested is not held in a reportable format a manual check of each case file would need to be undertaken. This would take 3 minutes per file, and there are 1630 files, therefore it would take over 81 hours to retrieve the information.
This response acts as a Refusal Notice for this part of your request.
Under the Act, there is a duty to provide advice and assistance as to how a request can be refined to fit within the appropriate limit. Unfortunately, due to the way the data is held, this is not possible for this request.
3. The total number of fixed penalty notices issued by the Local Authority against parents under Section 444 of the Education Act 1996 for their child’s non-attendance at school, where the child involved had an Education, Health and Care Plan at the time the fine was issued.
4. The amount of money raised by the local authority through fixed penalty notices issued against parents under Section 444 of the Education Act 1996 for non-attendance at school, where the child involved had an Education, Health and Care Plan at the time the fine was issued.
For questions 3 and 4, Section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 makes provision for public authorities to refuse requests for information where the cost of compliance would exceed the appropriate limit, which for local government is set at £450 or 18 hours of officer time. As the information requested is not held in a reportable format a manual check of each penalty notice would need to be undertaken. Taking just the 2024/25 year this would take 3 minutes per notice, and there were 3867 penalty notices issued, therefore it would take over 193 hours to retrieve the information.
This response acts as a Refusal Notice for these parts of your request.
Under the Act, there is a duty to provide advice and assistance as to how a request can be refined to fit within the appropriate limit. Unfortunately, due to the way the data is held, this is not possible for this request.