Source · Children's services

Serious Incident Notification Counts

1215 LA records

Notifications in England by year ending March

National series

The child death and serious harm split is published from 2019 onwards. These categories are shown alongside the total, not added to it.

Read chart figures as a table

Year ending March	Notifications	Child deaths	Serious harm
2015	385	Not published	Not published
2016	379	Not published	Not published
2017	433	Not published	Not published
2018	384	Not published	Not published
2019	498	227	236
2020	449	188	253
2021	536	223	284
2022	442	191	227
2023	456	201	244
2024	405	205	180
2025	338	162	167
2026	357	160	188

357 notifications, England (YE Mar 2026) 160 child deaths, England (YE Mar 2026)

Annual DfE counts of serious incident notifications made to Ofsted by local authority children's services — one figure per authority per year, and nothing else. There is no incident record behind a count: no date, no outcome, and no link to any review that followed. DfE publishes the child death / serious harm split at national level only, alongside ten national breakdowns by child and case characteristics, and suppresses small local counts.

Notifications, England (YE Mar 2026)

357

Child deaths, England (YE Mar 2026)

160

Serious harm, England (YE Mar 2026)

188

By region (YE Mar 2026, rounded to the nearest 10)

Worcestershire

YE Mar 2019 4 notifications

York

YE Mar 2019 suppressed by DfE

Source: DfE, Serious incident notifications. The ten national breakdowns the publication carries — age group, ethnicity, gender, sex, disability, placement type, looked-after status, child protection plan, child in need plan, and whether the child was known to any agency — are held alongside these counts. They are published at national level only, and DfE's suppression of small counts is preserved rather than filled in.