Please see this Freedom of Information request concerning Section 47 Investigations/ enquiries in relation to puberty blocker access for children.
1. Please confirm whether your local authority has issued/ commenced a Section 47 enquiry or investigation in respect of a child and/or their family/carer in relation to overseas access to puberty blockers/gender affirming care at any point in the last 5 years.
2. If yes, please list the number of Section 47 orders by date.
I am aware that there may be anonymity concerns. In cases where too few Section 47 orders have been issued, for example <5, please state a minimum figure and please simply confirm whether investigations were issued in the period pre May 2024, or post May 2024:
3. Please provide the reason for instigating or engaging the section 47 order in as much detail as you can.
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. As we do not hold this information in a format that is reportable, we would have to check 11936 records to see whether there is a Section 47 and at 15 minutes per record, this would take 2984 hours.
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.