Local Authority Children’s Services are Rotting from Within

Local authority children’s services across the country are in crisis. Nowhere is that clearer than in my Woking constituency.

In the early hours of 10th August 2023, Woking resident Sara Sharif was found murdered. She had a traumatic head injury, human bite marks and multiple broken bones. She had been burned by a domestic iron. Next to Sara’s body, the police found plastic bags, packing tape and a cricket bat, all with Sara’s blood on them.

The people who did that to Sara deserve a special place in hell, but unfortunately Sara’s death was not a one-off tragedy; it was the most extreme and horrific consequence of children’s services being hollowed out, fragmented and weakened over the years.

The day before Sara was murdered, Surrey’s County Council Children’s Services turned up at the wrong house due to an “administrative error”. Unfortunately, such errors are the inevitable consequence of years of decay caused by the underfunding and whittling down of children’s services, not just in Surrey but across the country.

It is shameful that we have allowed ourselves to reach a point where the most vulnerable people in our society are being so gravely failed by a system designed to protect them.

Surrey is supposed to be one of the most affluent areas of the country, and yet this is what our children’s services look like. What scares me most is that our county council’s children’s services were rated “Good” by Ofsted in March 2025, a decision that frankly I, many fellow MPs, constituents and people across Surrey find bonkers.

Based on what I know about Surrey, this “Good” rating is a thin veneer that barely covers up the rot within. If that is “Good”, what on earth is happening in the rest of the country?

It’s appalling that this Government’s recent spending review agreed a real-terms cut in the grant to local authorities for children’s services. We should not be cutting that funding; we should not be putting a price on a child’s life.

In the Westminster Hall debate I held about children’s services in local authorities on Wednesday 29th January 2026, we heard of massive discrepancies in the funding for children’s services across the country.

York for example spends £35 million – and its children’s services are rated outstanding – but just down the road, Bradford (albeit slightly larger) spends £262 million, and its children’s services are rated as inadequate.

This points to the complexity of the issue – just spending more money doesn’t necessarily deliver improved services. The challenges faced by different local authorities vary wildly and the Government needs to recognise that in different parts of the country, there are different funding challenges.

As my Lib Dem colleague Gideon Amos MP pointed out, in his rural Taunton and Wellington constituency, the Government’s removal of the funding uplift for the most remote authorities “will have an effect on children’s services, as it will on SEND provision and a whole range of council services.”

Gideon gave the example of Somerset, where it is 53% more expensive to provide home-to-school transport than in an average authority. It will clearly be easier and cheaper to travel around a suburban-urban are like mine than rural Somerset, but despite this their funding uplift has been removed.

This speaks to the crux of the issue; there is no one size fix all solution to solving the crisis in our children’s services.

From April of next year, my area will have a new local authority: West Surrey Council. Surrey County Council is set to be abolished, and I am pleased that it is. But in Surrey, and across the country, we cannot simply wait for local government reorganisation. Children’s lives are at risk now.

I want Sara’s legacy to be one that she is the last child to be abused, tortured and murdered by those that should have loved and protected her. For that to happen, we need a pragmatic approach, with better joined-up public services where information is shared quickly and effectively to prevent children from being put at risk.

We need to ensure that local authorities are well equipped to deal with the upcoming changes in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, so that no more children fall through the cracks.

I want Ministers to intervene in failing local authorities, putting them into special measures where necessary, to protect vulnerable children, like Sara, in Surrey and across the country.