Children Subject to Police Protection / Section 46 Children Act 1989
Case reference FOI2026/01566
Received 5 July 2026
Published 29 July 2026
Request
Please treat this as a request under the Freedom of Information Act 2000.
Please provide the following information held by Herefordshire Council Children’s Services for the period 1 April 2022 to the date of this request, broken down by financial year where possible.
1. The number of children in Herefordshire who became known to Children’s Services as being under police protection under section 46 Children Act 1989.
2. Of those children, the number aged:
* under 1 year;
* 1–4 years;
* 5–10 years;
* 11–15 years;
* 16–17 years.
3. The number of section 46 / police protection incidents where the child was subsequently:
* returned home within 72 hours;
* accommodated under section 20 Children Act 1989;
* made subject to an Emergency Protection Order application;
* made subject to care proceedings;
* placed with foster carers;
* placed with connected/family carers.
4. Any policy, protocol, joint protocol, guidance, practice note or template used by Herefordshire Council Children’s Services in relation to section 46 police protection, including any joint working protocol with West Mercia Police.
5. Any guidance on recording:
* why police protection was considered necessary;
* what less intrusive alternatives were considered;
* whether an Emergency Protection Order was considered;
* whether a safety plan or family arrangement was considered;
* proportionality and necessity.
6. The number of formal complaints received by Children’s Services during the above period concerning police protection, emergency removal, section 46, or out-of-hours emergency removal.
7. Of those complaints, the number upheld, partially upheld, not upheld, withdrawn, or otherwise resolved.
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Please provide anonymised aggregate data only. I am not requesting personal data or case-specific records.
If exact categories are not held, please provide the closest recorded category and briefly explain how the information is recorded.
If any part of this request would exceed the section 12 cost limit, please answer the parts that can be answered within the limit and provide advice and assistance on how the request may be refined.
Response
Please treat this as a request under the Freedom of Information Act 2000.
Please provide the following information held by Herefordshire Council Children’s Services for the period 1 April 2022 to the date of this request, broken down by financial year where possible.
1. The number of children in Herefordshire who became known to Children’s Services as being under police protection under section 46 Children Act 1989.
2. Of those children, the number aged:
* under 1 year;
* 1–4 years;
* 5–10 years;
* 11–15 years;
* 16–17 years.
3. The number of section 46 / police protection incidents where the child was subsequently:
* returned home within 72 hours;
* accommodated under section 20 Children Act 1989;
* made subject to an Emergency Protection Order application;
* made subject to care proceedings;
* placed with foster carers;
* placed with connected/family carers.
4. Any policy, protocol, joint protocol, guidance, practice note or template used by Herefordshire Council Children’s Services in relation to section 46 police protection, including any joint working protocol with West Mercia Police.
5. Any guidance on recording:
* why police protection was considered necessary;
* what less intrusive alternatives were considered;
* whether an Emergency Protection Order was considered;
* whether a safety plan or family arrangement was considered;
* proportionality and necessity.
6. The number of formal complaints received by Children’s Services during the above period concerning police protection, emergency removal, section 46, or out-of-hours emergency removal.
7. Of those complaints, the number upheld, partially upheld, not upheld, withdrawn, or otherwise resolved.
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Please provide anonymised aggregate data only. I am not requesting personal data or case-specific records.
If exact categories are not held, please provide the closest recorded category and briefly explain how the information is recorded.
If any part of this request would exceed the section 12 cost limit, please answer the parts that can be answered within the limit and provide advice and assistance on how the request may be refined.
Answer: The information for questions 6 and 7 is not held in a form that would enable it to be located, retrieved and extracted within the Appropriate Time Limit which equates to 18 hours as defined by the Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limits and Fees) Regulations 2004.
Our electronic reporting systems are unable to run a report for this information. We categorise complaints as; service failure, wrong/delay information, staff attitude/behaviour, poor/no communication or disagree with council decision. To ascertain the data requested, officers would need to manually check individual files for this information. An initial search has shown that 861 files would need to be checked for this information, and it is estimated that it would take 5 minutes to check each file. Once the details had been identified this would need to be noted and once all files had been checked in this way, the total figures requested could be calculated.
This would at a conservative estimate take at least 71 hours to complete. Where the Limit is exceeded Public Authorities are not obliged to supply the information requested by virtue of S12 of the Act. Please take this letter as a refusal notice under S17 of the Act.
However, if you would consider having information relating to the number of many complaints categorised as either service failure, wrong/delay information, staff attitude/behaviour, poor/no communication or disagree with council decision, we can provide this information for the requested period 1 April 2022 and 14 July 2026.
Also, within the 18 hour limit, we can provide answers for questions 1-5 as requested, however please be advised other exemptions may be applicable. Please advise us if this is something you require.
Documents
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