Please provide information in response to the questions below; broken down for the last five years, with a year-end date of 5th April, or whichever year-end is most convenient. If this cannot be provided, please provide the annual data for the last three years or, failing that, the last two.
1) The number of penalties issued to parents in relation to unauthorised absences.
September 2019 to July 2020 – 1445 issued.
September 2020 to July 2021 – 89 issued. Please note: 86 of these penalties were subsequently refunded and withdrawn.
September 2021 to July 2022 – 984 issued.
September 2022 to July 2023 – 3,166 issued.
September 2023 to current date – 1,757 issued.
2) The number of penalties issued to parents in relation to unauthorised holidays.
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 the Council does not hold a centralised record of figures of penalties issued in relation to unauthorised holidays. In order to locate and extract the requested information, a manual search of every children’s file held by the Council would be required. Due to the sheer volume of files, this would take in excess of the 18 hour appropriate limit.
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 number of staff whose role involves issuing penalties for unauthorised absences.
2019 – 2021 – 3 members of staff.
2021 – 2022 – 1 member of staff.
2022 – present – 3 members of staff.