Ofsted rated the council’s children’s services ‘inadequate’ following an inspection three years ago
15:17, 29 Sep 2025Updated 15:19, 29 Sep 2025
Loxley House In Nottingham, where the City Council is based(Image: LDRS)
More expert help is being brought in to help Nottingham City Council continue to improve its children’s services following a watchdog’s ‘inadequate’ rating in 2022.
Ofsted rated the council’s children’s services ‘inadequate’ following an inspection three years ago, and the Government watchdog has been conducting a series of visits to monitor improvements ever since.
The authority is expecting a concluding inspection between now and March next year, executive member for children and young people, Cllr Cheryl Barnard (Lab), told the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS).
More expert help is now being brought in at a cost of £256,000 to help the council “undertake specific organisation activity for Nottingham children’s services which will enable improvement of outcomes for children and families who we provide services to.”
“The corporate director for children and education services has identified a set of activities designed to address critical service gaps and accelerate the delivery of Nottingham’s children’s integrated services improvement and transformation plans,” documents say.
“The activity responds to urgent challenges identified through peer reviews, inspections, and internal assessments particularly around statutory compliance, service design, workforce capability, and financial sustainability.”
The children’s and education service is currently reporting an overspend of £3.8m in the current financial year, which ends March 31 next year.
According to the council this is in relation to the mix and profile of children placed in external residential placements, due to the complexity of many of their cases.
Together with a lower-than-expected number of non-kinship foster carers, costs for external care placements for children and young people are higher than anticipated, the council says.
In its final monitoring visit Ofsted said sufficiency challenges in foster care has also resulted in Nottingham city’s “continued use of unregistered children’s homes”.
Unregistered children’s homes are illegal, and anyone providing accommodation to a child in a setting not registered when it should be is committing an offence, Ofsted says.
Despite this, there has been a “concerning rise” in local authorities using unregistered homes nationally due to a lack of suitable registered placements.
Last year, the watchdog found more than 900 homes were unregistered across the country, almost three times the number of unregistered settings found in 2021/22.
In Nottingham, 15 children were placed in unregistered settings by the city council around July last year.
The latest figures show this has been reduced to just three children. However the highest weekly cost is still £16,476, compared to weekly average external residential costs of £6,691.
Most of the children with these care packages have substantial needs and require a high number of staff, the council added, and the continuing cost of care for the children “may not significantly decrease when initially moved to a registered placement due to their level of complex needs.”
To counter this the council says it is participating in a new joint commissioning arrangement with Nottinghamshire County Council, Derby City Council, and Derbyshire County Council for fostering and residential placements for children in care.
These will be delivered via two new contracts – one for fostering and one for residential – allowing for “tailored terms and conditions that better reflect the distinct needs, market conditions, and provider feedback in each sector”.
