The booming illegal children’s homes industry in England has been revealed for the first time, setting out the sheer scale of this shadow industry and the amount of public money being poured into it.
Payment records we have obtained from local councils reveal that hundreds of businesses are running children’s homes that are not registered with Ofsted. In total, they have been paid a quarter of a billion pounds in taxpayers’ money.
Unregistered homes are subject to no routine inspections and offer no guarantees of quality or safety. Operating them is a criminal offence. But a chronic lack of legal provision means councils are increasingly turning to them as a means of housing the country’s most vulnerable children.
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