Department for Education
Reporting year 2026

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

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4 data sets available for download

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  • Nature and characteristics of notifications

    National

    Number of serious incident notifications for each reporting year, by: nature of notification; child looked after; sex / gender; age; ethnicity; disability; placement type; child in need plan; child protection plan; child known to any agency; quarter.

    Number of rows
    656
    Indicators
    • Number of serious incident notifications
    Filters
    • Nature of serious incident notification
    • Breakdown
    • Reporting year quarter
    Time period
    2019 to 2026
    Data set information page for Nature and characteristics of notifications
    Create table using Nature and characteristics of notifications

  • Sub-national notifications with contextual data

    Local authority, National, Regional

    Number of serious incident notifications for each reporting year, by local authority and region.

    Number of rows
    1,311
    Indicators
    • Number of serious incident notifications
    • Number of children in need at 31 March
    • IDACI average score
    Time period
    2019 to 2026
    Data set information page for Sub-national notifications with contextual data
    Create table using Sub-national notifications with contextual data

  • Total Notifications

    National

    Number of serious incident notifications for each reporting year. Figures between 2015 and 2018 are based on Ofsted published data and figures for 2019 onwards are based on Department for Education data.

    Number of rows
    12
    Indicators
    • Number of serious incident notifications
    Time period
    2015 to 2026
    Data set information page for Total Notifications
    Create table using Total Notifications

  • Care leaver death notifications

    National

    Number of serious incident notifications for care leaver deaths for each reporting year, by age. These notifications are provided on a voluntary basis and so should be treated with a degree of caution with regard to their representativeness.

    Number of rows
    6
    Indicators
    • Number of serious incident notifications
    Filters
    • Breakdown
    Time period
    2025 to 2026
    Data set information page for Care leaver death notifications
    Create table using Care leaver death notifications
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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 files included in the 2026 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 to the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel (opens in new tab). 

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 2026.

File formats and conventions

Symbology

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

In the file ‘Sub-national notifications with contextual data’:

  • numbers of notifications at a regional level have been rounded to the nearest 10. Therefore, regional numbers may not sum to national totals.
  • national and regional children in need figures have been rounded to the nearest 10. Therefore, local authority numbers may not sum to regional totals and regional numbers may not sum to national totals. 

All other figures are unrounded.

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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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