Guidance
Children in need census 2025 to 2026: specification
Specification and validation rules for local authorities and software suppliers preparing for the 2025 to 2026 children in need census.
Applies to England
Documents
Details
This is technical information about submitting data for the children in need census for the period 1 April 2025 to 31 March 2026.
It is for:
- suppliers of software for local authority management information systems (MIS)
- users of local authority MIS software
It explains:
- changes to the previous year’s census collection
- what data local authorities should supply at child level
- how to structure the data in XML
- how to check the data against the validation rules