Ofsted's Chief Inspector, Sir Martyn Oliver, used a speech at the annual National Children and Adult Services (NCAS) conference in Liverpool to explain how the regulator is handling unregistered children's homes, inspections for children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), and planned changes to children's social care inspection.
Unregistered children's homes
Oliver called unregistered provision illegal and unlawful, and said the most worrying cases are unsafe. He said inspectors have found children whom local authorities had put in Airbnbs and hotel rooms. They have also found children looked after by staff who lacked childcare experience and had not had criminal record checks. Ofsted is concerned that some of these arrangements have links to organised crime and county lines, he said.
Recent inspections show numbers falling significantly as councils expand foster care, kinship care and local residential care, he said, though that is not yet true everywhere. Oliver said some operators are driven by profit, seldom try to register, and change their name once caught.
According to Oliver, registered children's homes are at a record of over 5,000, up from around 3,200 when he joined Ofsted in January 2024. Monthly applications have climbed to 150 to 170, compared with 30 to 50 in the past, and the registration backlog reached 1,082 last week. Of those incoming applications, only about 6% to 10% meet the criteria in Ofsted's recently published prioritisation policy, which favours homes in the right locations for the children who need them most, such as those leaving secure children's homes or a long hospital stay. He described the overall quality of applications as very poor.
Oliver argued that the difficulty is not simply a lack of beds but a mismatch: the right homes, with suitably skilled staff, are not in the right places. He noted there are around 5,000 empty beds nationally, but said many will not be used as planned. When a child's needs are more complex, staffing ratios shift, so a home designed for 4 may end up housing 2 children or only one.
Oliver said Ofsted secured its first successful prosecution this year and that more would follow "very soon". The regulator has expanded its team, bringing in former police officers among others, so it can keep prosecuting and begin fining providers that do not register their homes, he said.
Area SEND inspections
Oliver said the Department for Education has confirmed that Ofsted will not switch to a new Area SEND framework until fresh legislation is enacted. Statutory and non-statutory guidance to underpin any change is not planned until autumn 2029, he said, and Ofsted has been asked to carry on with Area SEND inspections as they are now.
Ofsted's present expectation, he said, is that by the end of 2027 each local area partnership will have received at least one inspection under the existing framework, and the regulator is on track. Oliver argued that pausing inspections would risk an accountability gap.
Consultation and next steps
Ofsted is going through responses to its consultation on children's social care changes, which asked among other things about a 5-point scale and new grades. Oliver said the response will be published early next year, followed by new inspection materials, with all ILACS changes expected to be implemented from spring 2027.
As those steps unfold, Oliver said Ofsted would back councils because they know what works, and he cited four as examples. In Haringey, he said, early help is reducing harm across all age groups; South Tyneside has turned around children's services previously judged inadequate; most children in Hertfordshire live in high-quality homes; and Essex benefits from strong and stable leadership and effective partnerships.
