Call for crackdown on Lancashire children's homes that don't take the county's kids
There are calls to toughen up the rules governing the conversion of ordinary houses into children’s homes in Preston.
It comes amid claims that many of the privately-run facilities are not catering for vulnerable Lancashire youngsters – some of whom have to be sent to other parts of the country when they are in need of placements.
That is in spite of Lancashire having more children’s homes than any other county in England – and eight percent of the nationwide total, as of April 2024.
Preston city councillor Ben Ward said care companies were increasingly coming to Lancashire “to make a profit, often because [of] cheaper and available labour” – but then failing to meet local needs.
Figures cited by Hyndburn Council show that, last August, there were more than 1,100 young people from outside Lancashire placed in children’s homes in the county council area – a greater number of externally-originated children than living in any other local authority’s patch.
“At the moment we are letting down the children of our city…who can’t get quality care [here] because of private providers…maximising [their] profit by making those spaces available for people from elsewhere,” Cllr Ward told a recent meeting of Preston City Council.
To that end, he urged the authority to make it “a high priority” to change the system for approving children’s homes in domestic dwellings by requiring them to obtain planning permission.
A full planning application is not currently required for such a switch as it is not deemed to be a “material change of use” of the property.
Instead, a firm proposing to open a children’s residential unit in what is presently a private house can go through the less onerous process of obtaining a ‘lawful development certificate’.
However, a Preston resident called on the city authority to follow the lead taken by its counterpart in Hyndburn, which last month adopted a so-called ‘supplementary planning document’ (SPD), setting out a requirement for full planning permission for the conversion of domestic homes into children’s homes.
In a section of the meeting for public questions, Bruce Ellison said Lancashire County Council – which is responsible for children’s social care – had “confirmed” that the county has more children’s homes than are needed for its own young people.
The Hyndburn SPD enables the authority to assess applications for new children’s residences against a series of objectives, including aims to avoid “the undue concentration of children’s homes in a particular area” and to secure facilities in “appropriate and suitable locations that best meet the needs of looked-after children”.
However, Preston City Council’s Labour cabinet member for regulation and planning, Amber Afzal, said the authority was “not proposing” to pursue a similar policy, but pledged the matter would be “kept under review” following completion of the Central Lancashire Local Plan.
She stressed that any such move would have to be rooted in a rationale for “why the council would be minded to treat applications for a children’s care home as being materially different from the use of a dwelling house”.
“An SPD cannot be used to alter a point of law, for example, [about] whether a proposed use or development would require planning permission or not,” Cllr Afzal added.
Hyndburn Council says that its SPD is based on legal advice and planning appeal decisions which have led it to conclude that “a material change of use would occur” when converting a private house into a children’s care home – for reasons including it becoming a “staffed workplace” and the resultant “change in character”.
As part of its justification for the policy, the authority notes in the document that Lancashire has attracted “a disproportionate level of market interests from agency children’s care providers since 2020”.
Of the 282 children’s homes in Lancashire – according to data for April 2024 – 267 were operated by care agencies.
At that point, there were up to 830 places registered with the regulator in agency children’s homes in Lancashire, but only 129 of them – just 16 percent – were being used to care for Lancashire children.
The Hyndburn SPD refers to records provided by the Lancashire Policy, Commissioning and Children’s Health Department, in which it is acknowledged that “theoretically, there are more than enough Ofsted-registered agency children’s homes within Lancashire to meet the demand for care accommodation in the county”.
Nevertheless, it is “still challenging to find good quality and suitable home[s] for some Lancashire children”, the document adds.
The Local Democracy Reporting Service approached Lancashire County Council for comment on the issues raised in this report, but did not receive a response.
Last year, the authority embarked on a plan to open another 15 of its own in-house children’s homes in order to reduce the burgeoning bill for use of facilities in the private sector.
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