How much this council spends each year protecting and looking after children — children in care, foster placements, social workers, child protection. This is the budget most likely to blow up unexpectedly, because the council legally must help every child at risk whatever it costs, and it is the main reason councils overspend. A high number often means more children needing help, not a wasteful council — what matters is how it compares with similar places and whether it is rising fast.
| name | childrens-social-care-total |
|---|---|
| dataset | 01-revenue-outturn |
| kind | extracted |
| type | numeric |
| unit | £000 per year |
| grain | council-year |
| role | feature |
| source | "data/Revenue_Outturn_time_series_data_v3.2.csv, column `RO3_csctot_net_cur_exp`, with the same suffix family (`_empl`, `_run_exp`, `_tot_exp`, `_sfc`, `_tot_inc`)" |
| period | "FY 2017-18 to 2024-25, annual (year_ending 201803-202503)" |
| missingness | "Rows with status other than "submitted" (i.e. "total" aggregates and "not submitted") must be filtered out; a non-submitted council-year is a genuine gap, not zero. 2024-25 covers 410/411 councils. Councils abolished/created in 2017-25 reorganisations appear only for the years they existed." |
| score_note | Key pressure line but level is demand-driven; efficiency signal only emerges via trend/peer comparison, overlaps dataset 05. |
| peer_group | council class (district / county / unitary / metropolitan / London) — not yet scored on the leaderboard |
Total children's social care net current expenditure with its gross components. This is the most demand-volatile budget; growth here drives most council overspends, so its trend versus peers is a key pressure signal for efficiency scoring. High spend may reflect demand rather than inefficiency — pair with trend and peer comparison within LA_class.