I’m researching unregistered children’s homes, which are homes providing some form of ‘care’ to children but not registered with Ofsted.
1. How much did the council spend on unregistered children’s home placements in (a) 2021/22 and (b) 2022/23?
2. Please list the companies / organisations paid by the council to provide unregistered children’s home places, including the total paid to each, in (a) 2021/22 and (b) 2022/23? Please provide this information in a spreadsheet format.
Devon County Council believes compliance with this request would exceed the appropriate cost limit under Section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, which is £450 or 18 hours of officer time. This is because we do not hold data in a format that would enable unregistered children’s homes to be identified.
To extract this information would require a manual review of each of the 55 placements listed under an exceptional arrangement in 2021/22 and each of the 46 placements listed under exceptional arrangements in 2022/23 to ascertain the type of care and type of accommodation provided. We estimate that a minimum of 15 minutes of work is required to review each of these 101 placements and so a minimum of 25 hours is required to obtain this information. Therefore, Section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 is engaged.