Waiting times for care packages for each of the past five years (2020-2025).
Case reference FOI2025/02046
Received 15 October 2025
Published 1 December 2025
Request
Under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, I would like to request copies of the following:
Waiting times for care packages:
1) The average waiting time for eligible individuals to receive a care package following their assessment, for each of the past five years (2020-2025).
If available, please include the longest and shortest waiting times recorded each year.
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CLARIFICATION:
• What do you mean by eligible individuals?
-By eligible individuals, I mean people who have been assessed by the local authority (or Trust, if applicable) and determined to have eligible care and support needs under the Care Act 2014 (for adults) or under the Children Act 1989 (for children’s social care, if relevant). So, I’m referring to service users who have completed an assessment and been approved to receive a care package funded or arranged by the authority — not those awaiting assessment or deemed ineligible.
• What care package are you referring to?
-By care package, I mean any formal arrangement of care and support services put in place following an eligibility assessment. This includes, for example:
* Homecare/domiciliary support
* Residential or nursing care placements
* Supported living arrangements
* Day services or other commissioned care services.
-If it’s difficult to provide data for all types, please prioritise homecare and residential/nursing care packages.
• Do you require data by Financial Year or Calendar year?
-Calendar year
• What do you mean by waiting time?
-By waiting time, I mean the time elapsed between the date an individual’s assessment determined them eligible for support and the date their care package actually started (i.e., services began being delivered). If that data isn’t recorded precisely, please use the closest equivalent measure your system tracks (e.g., date of approval vs. first care provision).
Response
Under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, I would like to request copies of the following:
Waiting times for care packages:
1) The average waiting time for eligible individuals to receive a care package following their assessment, for each of the past five years (2020-2025).
If available, please include the longest and shortest waiting times recorded each year.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
CLARIFICATION:
• What do you mean by eligible individuals?
-By eligible individuals, I mean people who have been assessed by the local authority (or Trust, if applicable) and determined to have eligible care and support needs under the Care Act 2014 (for adults) or under the Children Act 1989 (for children’s social care, if relevant).
So, I’m referring to service users who have completed an assessment and been approved to receive a care package funded or arranged by the authority — not those awaiting assessment or deemed ineligible.
• What care package are you referring to?
-By care package, I mean any formal arrangement of care and support services put in place following an eligibility assessment.
This includes, for example:
* Homecare/domiciliary support
* Residential or nursing care placements
* Supported living arrangements
* Day services or other commissioned care services.
-If it’s difficult to provide data for all types, please prioritise homecare and residential/nursing care packages.
• Do you require data by Financial Year or Calendar year?
-Calendar year
• What do you mean by waiting time?
-By waiting time, I mean the time elapsed between the date an individual’s assessment determined them eligible for support and the date their care package actually started (i.e., services began being delivered).
If that data isn’t recorded precisely, please use the closest equivalent measure your system tracks (e.g., date of approval vs. first care provision).
Answer: This information for Children’s Services 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 Children’s Services electronic reporting systems are unable to run a report for this information. To ascertain the data requested, officers would need to manually check individual files for this information. An initial search has shown that 500 files would need to be checked for this information for the current year alone, and it is estimated that it would take 30 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 250 hours to complete for the current year alone. 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, within the 18 hour limit, we can provide answers for Adult’s Social Services for the past five years (2020-2025) as requested. Please advise us if this is something you require.
Documents
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