DfE advised to shake up children's services financial reporting

Under section 251 of the Apprenticeship, Skills, Children and Learning Act 2009 councils must hand over information about their budgeted as well as actual income and spending.

But a Department for Education commissioned report, carried out by Revolution Consulting, says that much of the data is already out of date by the time it is published.

Under current reporting arrangements councils do not publish planned budget information until six months into the financial year it applies to. Actual spending data is not available until nine months after the financial year in question.

"The timing of returns means that for the first six months of a year there is no information available about the current financial year," the report states.

"Relative timing of the two returns also creates a 15-month period during which only the budget information is available."

The report says that, as data providers, local authorities have "mixed views" as to the usefulness of the information, particularly in helping shape local services, such as education planning, says the report.

"Whilst some authorities therefore classify section 251 reporting as a burden with little value locally, it is equally possible to encounter positive attitudes amongst local authority officers towards improving the utility of the information," the report states.

Council officers who spoke to the research team also detailed the administrative burden involved - stating that the processes of data collection under section 251 are tasks that "add to the load on local authorities".

DfE officials interviewed also spoke of the variability in quality of the data. With 152 councils submitting returns on actual and budgeted spending and income each year there are around 180,000 items of data for central government to look at.

The report suggests that the amount of information collected is "streamlined", by using the previous year's actual spending and income to predict the financial results for the current financial year.