This page is a guide to the serious incident notifications official statistics release published by the Department for Education (DfE). It sets out information on:
This annual release contains statistics on serious incidents involving children that have been notified by local authorities. 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.
Serious harm includes (but is not limited to) serious and/or long-term impairment of a child’s mental health or intellectual, emotional, social or behavioural development. It also covers impairment of physical health.
The Children Act 2004 (as amended by the Children and Social Work Act 2017 (opens in new tab)) states that where a local authority in England knows or suspects that a child has been abused or neglected, the local authority must notify the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel (opens in new tab) (the Panel) if:
The statutory duty to notify the Panel of serious incidents where abuse or neglect was known or suspected came into effect from 29 June 2018. Prior to this, these notifications were only made to Ofsted.
The local authority should notify the Panel of serious incidents where abuse or neglect is known or suspected within five working days of becoming aware that the incident has occurred. However, in some cases, there can be delays in notifications being submitted.
DfE and Ofsted have joint access to the information submitted to the Panel via the child safeguarding incident notification system.
The local authority must also notify the Secretary of State for Education and Ofsted where a looked after child has died, whether or not abuse or neglect is known or suspected, via the child safeguarding incident notification system. The local authority should also notify DfE and Ofsted of the death of a care leaver up to and including the age of 24, via the child safeguarding incident notification system.
The statistics show the number of incidents notified in the period, rather than the number of incidents that occurred in the period and are based on one notification per incident, which can relate to more than one child in some instances.
Each reporting year covers the year to 31 March, with the most recent 2026 statistics covering the period 1 April 2025 to 31 March 2026.
Time-series comparisons in this release are made from 2019 onwards, when DfE first became responsible for producing and publishing these statistics (previously produced and published by Ofsted).
Local authorities notify the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel (opens in new tab) (the Panel) of serious incidents where abuse or neglect is known or suspected via the Child Safeguarding Incident Notification System (opens in new tab). The local authority should notify the Panel within five working days of becoming aware that the incident has occurred. The online system stores the information submitted by the local authority and this can be accessed by the Panel, DfE and Ofsted. Local authorities must also notify DfE and Ofsted of any serious incidents where a looked after child has died, whether or not abuse or neglect is known or suspected, via the Child Safeguarding Incident Notification System. Local authorities should also notify DfE and Ofsted of the death of a care leaver up to and including the age of 24, via the Child Safeguarding Incident Notification System.
The Child Safeguarding Incident Notification System automatically notifies DfE, the Panel and Ofsted of an incident. The details of each notification are stored by DfE.
If a notification form has missing or inaccurate data entries, DfE will request clarification from the local authority and ask the local authority to resubmit. If resubmitting is not possible, DfE will liaise with the local authority to make manual changes to the data received.
The data is aggregated by characteristics such as age group, ethnicity, and incident type, for the purpose of internal reporting. This allows officials to alert ministers to emerging concerns about particular trends.
The data is quality assured by DfE at both the categorisation and the aggregation stage. Where information is missing, or in cases where there is clearly an error, DfE contacts the local authority for clarification.
DfE has been responsible for the production and publication of the statistics for over six years and data quality has improved since 29 June 2018 following the statutory duty coming into effect on local authorities to notify the Panel of serious incidents.Prior to this, notifications were made only to Ofsted.
DfE in recent years has been working more closely with local authorities to increase awareness and familiarisation with the reporting system and to address data issues where necessary. For example, contacting local authorities where applicable to ensure categorical data is recorded accurately.
The process of notifying serious incidents has now been running for a number of years and local authorities are familiar with the notification system. DfE continues to make improvements to the system to improve data quality.
Users should read all footnotes and caveats presented in this release to fully understand the practical applications and limitations of the data.
When using the data consider:
In some instances, a notification can relate to more than one child. Where this happens, the characteristics information is based on one child only. This is either:
CLA status was added in December 2022 and accompanying guidance was added in April 2023 to the Child Safeguarding Incident Notification System. Each notification for a CLA death represents the death of one CLA child.
A child is looked after by a local authority if they are:
CLA deaths figures as reported in the DfE statistics release Children looked after in England including adoptions are produced on a different basis from information within the SSDA903 CLA return (opens in new tab) and are not directly comparable with the CLA deaths figures reported in these statistics. In particular, the period the notification relates to is when the notification was reported, not the date of death.
Data on gender was collected and reported until the 2025 release (specifically up to 31 March 2025). Data on sex has been collected and reported since the 2026 release (specifically since 1 April 2025). Sex should be provided as recognised in law, i.e. the sex as recorded on a birth certificate or on a gender recognition certificate. Previously, gender included transgender as a category and may have meant that gender identity was reported in some cases for male and female, as opposed to legal sex.
The recording of disability has improved in the 2026 statistics (specifically since 1 April 2025) due to the provision of specific options for the recording of this information and improved guidance. This has resulted in the percentage of serious incident notifications involving children with a disability increasing from between 13% and 23% in previous years, to 32% in 2026.
There is likely to be an undercount in the number of notifications in 2019 recorded with a disability status of not known (with a corresponding overcount in the number of notifications recorded as involving children with no disability).
There is likely to be an overcount in the number of notifications in 2019 recorded as relating to those on a child protection plan.
The release contains statistics since 2024 on notifications relating to children with a child in need plan, following the addition of child in need plan status in December 2022 to the Child Safeguarding Incident Notification System (opens in new tab).
The category ‘living with relatives’ was reported until 2025 (specifically up to 31 March 2025). This has been replaced by ‘kinship care’ from 2026 (specifically since 1 April 2025) with no change to its definition.
The following points on children known to any agency should be considered when interpreting the statistics:
Care leavers status was added in January 2024 to the Child Safeguarding Incident Notification System. Each notification represents the death of one care leaver.
Care leaver death notifications are provided on a voluntary basis and so should be treated with a degree of caution with regard to their representativeness of care leaver deaths. They are not included in the other statistics within this release. Notifications for care leaver deaths for those aged 16 or 17 where abuse or neglect was known or suspected are included in the other statistics within this release (there is a statutory requirement to provide these notifications).
The statistics were added following guidance in Working Together to Safeguard Children 2023 (opens in new tab) that local authorities should also notify the Secretary of State for Education and Ofsted of the death of care leavers up to and including the age of 24.
A care leaver is a person who is no longer looked after.
A child is a care leaver if they are aged 16 or 17 and fall into one of the following:
Care leaver deaths figures as reported in the DfE statistics release Children looked after in England including adoptions are produced on a different basis from information within the SSDA903 CLA return (opens in new tab) and are not directly comparable with the care leaver deaths figures reported in these statistics. In particular, notifications published in this release were provided irrespective of whether the care leaver was receiving support from the local authority at the time of death, only if the care leaver was aged 16 to 24 at the time of their death, and the period relates to when the notification was reported, not the date of death.
Children in need data for 2021 and 2022 is not available for Hackney local authority, therefore 2020 data for Hackney has been included in the 2021 and 2022 national totals and regional totals. Similarly, children in need data for 2024 is not available for Hampshire local authority, therefore 2023 data for Hampshire has been included in the 2024 national and regional totals.
Revised (for 2022 and 2023) and new (for 2024) mid-year population estimates for children aged 0 to 17 years in England were used in this 2026 release.
The main users of serious incident notification data are:
Other known users of the data are:
The following symbols are used in the underlying data files as follows:
| Symbol | Meaning |
|---|---|
| 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.
In the file ‘Sub-national notifications with contextual data’:
All other figures are unrounded.
These statistics have been published as official statistics for the fourth time, whereas previously they were classified as experimental statistics (now known as official statistics in development). (opens in new tab) Further information on the different types of official statistic is available on the website of the UK Statistics Authority (opens in new tab).
DfE regularly reviews its statistical publications to ensure they are of high quality and continue to meet user need.
DfE is aware that, in some instances, not all incidents that meet the definition of a serious incident are notified. As a result, SIN data is incomplete and not sufficiently reliable to support meaningful analysis or decision making.
In addition, user engagement with the SIN Official Statistics is low, raising questions about their value, impact, and continued use.
The Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel is changing the way it reports so that evidence and learning from national oversight of rapid reviews will be published on a quarterly and annual basis. These quarterly reports will provide a breakdown of the number of rapid reviews submitted for incidents occurring in that quarter, broken down by region, incident type and an overview of the demographics of the children who experienced harm. The reports will further highlight a small number of emerging themes and will be published on the Panel’s website (opens in new tab). This will sit alongside Panel reviews into complex or nationally important child safeguarding issues, which also provide important sources of learning and information.
Given the concerns about reliability of the data and its low usage, and that more comprehensive and timely information will be available through alternative publications, the Department is proposing to cease publication of the SIN Official Statistics series.
We welcome feedback on this proposal. Please send your comments by 31 August 2026 to: sin.statistics@education.gov.uk.
The serious incident notifications publication is produced using a final version of the dataset. DfE does not plan to make any revisions to the publication. If it is later discovered that a revision is necessary, this will be made in accordance with the DfE statistical policy statement on revisions (opens in new tab). In the 2023 release, the figures on whether the child was known to any agencies for 2020 and 2021 were revised slightly from earlier publications to reflect improved recording of data.
If you have a specific enquiry about Serious incident notifications statistics and data:
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