Reporting year 2024

Serious incident notifications

Annual statistics for England on serious incidents that involve death or serious harm to a child due to abuse or neglect, and any death of a looked-after child.

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  • National including breakdowns

    National

    Number of serious incident notifications for each reporting year, by: - nature of notification; - whether child was looked after (2024 only); - gender; - age; - ethnicity; - disability; - placement type; - whether child had a protection plan; - whether child was known to any agency; - reporting year quarter.

    Number of rows
    470
    Indicators
    • Number of serious incident notifications
    Filters
    • Nature of serious incident notification
    • Breakdown
    • Reporting year quarter
    Time period
    2019 to 2024
    Data set information page for National including breakdowns
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  • Regional and local authority totals

    Local authority, National, Regional

    Number of serious incident notifications for each reporting year, by local authority and region. PLEASE NOTE: Neither high nor low numbers of serious incident notifications alone should be interpreted as a performance measure of the local authority or its workforce. When interpreting data on serious incident notifications, local authority contextual information is an important consideration. Local authorities with larger populations tend to be more likely to report more serious incident notifications than those with smaller populations. Those with higher levels of deprivation also tend to be more likely to report higher rates of serious incident notifications than those with lower levels of deprivation. In addition, whilst reporting has improved in recent years, the Department is aware that, in some instances, not all incidents that meet the definition for a serious incident are notified. Data relating to population size, the number of children in need and deprivation have been included to provide further contextual information to the data on serious incident notifications.

    Number of rows
    981
    Indicators
    • Number of serious incident notifications
    • Number of children in need at 31 March
    • IDACI average score in 2019
    Time period
    2019 to 2024
    Data set information page for Regional and local authority totals
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  • Commentary - Figure 1

    National

    Total number of serious incident notifications for each reporting year. Figures on serious incident notifications between 2015 and 2018 are based on  Ofsted published data (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/serious-incident-notifications-from-local-authority-childrens-services-2017-to-2018/serious-incident-notifications-from-local-authority-childrens-services-2017-to-2018-main-findings) and for 2019 onwards are based on Department for Education data.

    Number of rows
    10
    Indicators
    • Number of serious incident notifications
    Time period
    2015 to 2024
    Data set information page for Commentary - Figure 1
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Data guidance

Description of the data sets included in this release, including information on data sources, coverage, quality and any data conventions used.

Description

This guidance describes the data included in the 2024 official statistics release on Serious incident notifications. 

This data is released under the terms of the Open Government Licence (opens in new tab) and is intended to meet at least 3 stars for Open Data (opens in new tab). 

The methodology page should be referenced alongside this data.

Coverage

This annual release contains statistics on serious incidents involving children that local authorities have notified the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel (opens in new tab) about. 

Notifiable serious incidents are those that involve death or serious harm to a child where abuse or neglect is known or suspected, and any death of a looked after child.

The underlying data files include national, regional and local authority level information for the years 2019 to 2024.

Symbols

The following symbols are used in the underlying data files as follows: 

     c     to protect confidentiality - secondary suppression may also be applied to figures to protect confidentiality

     x      data not available 

Where any number is shown as zero, the original figure submitted was zero.

Rounding

Regional numbers have been rounded to the nearest 10. National and local authority numbers are unrounded. As a result of rounding, regional numbers may not sum to national totals.

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Contact us

If you have a specific enquiry about Serious incident notifications statistics and data:

Children’s Services Statistics Team

Email: sin.stats@education.gov.uk
Contact name: Andy Brook

Press office

If you have a media enquiry:

Telephone: 020 7783 8300

Public enquiries

If you have a general enquiry about the Department for Education (DfE) or education:

Phone: 0370 000 2288

Opening times

Monday to Friday from 9.30am to 5.30pm (closed on bank holidays)

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