“Ealing Children’s Centers offer integrated early years provision in collaboration with the health visiting service, midwifery and perinatal mental health teams to deliver the Healthy Child programme. Early Start workers are based within the health visiting team and provide accessible targeted family support and 1 to 1 and group-based parenting programmes. The core purpose of children[’s] centers is to improve outcomes for young children and their families and reduce inequalities between families in greatest need. They achieve this through a range of early childhood services. Children's Centre activities are designed using the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) framework and aim to provide universal, targeted and specialist activities and support for children.”
“Ealing’s towns and communities are diverse, with different levels of deprivation, different patterns of how families access services, and different community assets. I therefore considered it essential that a future model be flexible, locality based, and responsive to these variations, rather than adopting a single, standardised approach which in my view would not be sufficient.”
“The Council’s Medium-Term Financial Strategy (MTFS) approved on12 February 2025 reflects these realities. It requires the authority to make difficult decisions each year to achieve a balanced budget, as legally required bysection 32 of the Local Government Finance Act 1992 . Where the MTFS includes indicative savings or cost-pressure assumptions, these are not determinative of any single service decision. They are part of the Council’s overall duty to demonstrate that its finances remain sustainable. This is made plainly clear in the MTFS report in the recommendations and at paragraph 215 which states “Some of the savings proposals will have further implications which will only emerge following detailed planning and consultation. Where this is the case, those implications will be considered before a final decision is taken on implementation, including whether a proposal should be amended. Where detailed proposals result in a lower financial saving, it is the responsibility of the relevant Strategic Director to find alternative replacement savings.”
“1. The purpose of the report on the 2025/26 Budget and Medium-Term Financial Strategy (MTFS) was to enable Cabinet to consider the budget proposals and make recommendations to Full Council when it finalises the budget and sets council tax on4 March 2025 . 2. The option not to consider the budget and council tax proposals was not considered as the council was legally required to set a balanced budget and council tax each financial year. 3. … 4. The savings proposals in this report aligned with the strategic vision, Council Plan and the Medium-Term Financial Strategy on the allocation of resources. Some of the savings’ proposals would have further implications which would only emerge following detailed planning and consultation. Where this was the case, those implications would be considered before a final decision is taken on implementation, including whether a proposal should be amended. Where detailed proposals resulted in a lower financial saving, it was the responsibility of the relevant Strategic Director to find alternative replacement savings.”
“Although it’s not the main reason for this review, generating additional income from council-owned buildings is also one of the many ideas every local authority is having to explore, to make sure local services have long-term financial security.”
“Southall is the area within Ealing which has the greatest level of need.[…] Southall also has a significant amount of new housing developments, meaning a likely imminent increased need for use of existing children’s centres[…] Despite this, Southall is the worst hit of the seven towns in which centres are proposed to close. It was initially proposed that Southall would lose 4 of its 6 children’s centres. Under the final proposals it is due to lose its main centre (Grove House) as well as Windmill Park and Greenfields. It will therefore lose half (3 of 6) of its children’s centres, including the main ‘hub’ in the most deprived part of the borough.”
“They explained that they valued having local children's centres that they could walk to, and where they could build local community connections and support. They cited difficulties with taking buggies on buses, the cost of public transport, the distance and travel time to centres being prohibitive to them accessing support from further away. They also raised concern that reducing the number of available centres would result in overcrowding at the remaining centres. […] They raised concerns that individuals from vulnerable and marginalised groups would be particularly badly affected, due to the loss of access to their local centre, losing the opportunity for peer support in their local community, not being able to afford transport costs, due to language barriers to accessing information of where to find an alternative centre or services, and being digitally excluded due to the cost of data and lack of digital skills.”
“I wish the Council could have chosen to build trust with parents and be honest by saying at the beginning that it doesn't have enough money to run a full service and it is actively listening to ideas of what to do with a smaller budget. It wasn't properly said in the consultation, but we know this is largely about money because they accepted big budget cuts whilst the consultation was still in progress. However during the consultations they just kept saying that all they wanted to do was improve the service and were not properly referring to the closure of centres as being a 'cut' or 'saving' scheme. It was not made clear that in fact the Council had already decided to cut the budget in February.”
“A strengthened outreach offer can help identify and support families who might be unaware of the Early Help offer delivered through Children’s Centres or who are hesitant to seek assistance. Collaborations with nurseries, GP surgeries and community and faith organisations can help us reach underserved communities and broaden the reach of our offer. The offer can be strengthened through a mixture of delivering sessions and by having a presence in partner spaces to provide advice, information and guidance.”
“A strong and improved Early Help offer is expected to produce better outcomes for children and families and is a preventative service to avoid more costly social care intervention therefore avoiding future demand and costs. Focusing our offer across a smaller number of children’s centres, while expanding our outreach offer, will allow for a more efficient service model, through a combination of reduction in costs and increase in rental income. There will also be cost avoidance to the wider Children’s Services budget through use of repurposed assets to support delivery of services for children with special educational and additional needs, and increased childcare sufficiency. Children’s Services have a robust savings target of£11.819m for 2025/26 as part of the MTFS agreed by Cabinet in February 2025, which aims to ensure the financial resilience of the council. This proposal supports delivery of a savings target of£751k by 2026/27. There will be part-delivery of some savings in 2025/26 however due to the timing of implementation the full impact will not be felt until 2026/27.”
“The Committee felt that there was misunderstanding and misinformation circulating around the reasons for these proposals and what the proposals were. It was clear that the proposals were not a cut in services, but there was a reduction in the number of children’s centres that would be open. If the current offer didn’t reach the children that needed it then it needed to be reviewed and the consultation and proposals clearly showed the Council had a vision on how to do this. The aims of the proposals were to improve outcomes for the hardest to reach children who were not getting the services they needed. If that meant closing centres that were open on a very limited basis, and therefore not accessible to the parents that needed them when they needed the service, then it would be a better use of resources.”
“In R (Moseley) v Haringey London Borough Council[2014] UKSC 56 ,[2014] 1 WLR 3947 , Lord Wilson JSC identified the purposes and requirements of a fair consultation at [24]-[26]: “24. Fairness is a protean concept, not susceptible of much generalised enlargement. But its requirements in this context must be linked to the purposes of consultation. In R (Osborn) v Parole Board[2014] 1 AC 1115 , this court addressed the common law duty of procedural fairness in the determination of a person's legal rights. Nevertheless the first two of the purposes of procedural fairness in that somewhat different context, identified by Lord Reed JSC in paras 67 and 68 of his judgment, equally underlie the requirement that a consultation should be fair. First, the requirement "is liable to result in better decisions, by ensuring that the decision-maker receives all relevant information and that it is properly tested": para 67. Second, it avoids "the sense of injustice which the person who is the subject of the decision will otherwise feel": para 68. Such are two valuable practical consequences of fair consultation. But underlying it is also a third purpose, reflective of the democratic principle at the heart of our society. 25.… [the following] basic requirements are essential if the consultation process is to have a sensible content. First, that consultation must be at a time when proposals are still at a formative stage. Second, that the proposer must give sufficient reasons for any proposal to permit of intelligent consideration and response. Third . . . that adequate time must be given for consideration and response and, finally, fourth, that the product of consultation must be conscientiously taken into account in finalising any statutory proposals. “24. Fairness is a protean concept, not susceptible of much generalised enlargement. But its requirements in this context must be linked to the purposes of consultation. In R (Osborn) v Parole Board[2014] 1 AC 1115 , this court addressed the common law duty of procedural fairness in the determination of a person's legal rights. Nevertheless the first two of the purposes of procedural fairness in that somewhat different context, identified by Lord Reed JSC in paras 67 and 68 of his judgment, equally underlie the requirement that a consultation should be fair. First, the requirement "is liable to result in better decisions, by ensuring that the decision-maker receives all relevant information and that it is properly tested": para 67. Second, it avoids "the sense of injustice which the person who is the subject of the decision will otherwise feel": para 68. Such are two valuable practical consequences of fair consultation. But underlying it is also a third purpose, reflective of the democratic principle at the heart of our society. 25.… [the following] basic requirements are essential if the consultation process is to have a sensible content. First, that consultation must be at a time when proposals are still at a formative stage. Second, that the proposer must give sufficient reasons for any proposal to permit of intelligent consideration and response. Third . . . that adequate time must be given for consideration and response and, finally, fourth, that the product of consultation must be conscientiously taken into account in finalising any statutory proposals. 26. Two further general points emerge from the authorities. First, the degree of specificity with which, in fairness, the public authority should conduct its consultation exercise may be influenced by the identity of those whom it is consulting. Thus, for example, local authorities who were consulted about the Government's proposed designation of Stevenage as a "new town" (Fletcher v Minister of Town and Country Planning [I947] 2 All ER 496, 50I) would be likely to be able to respond satisfactorily to a presentation of less specificity than would members of the public, particularly perhaps the economically disadvantaged. Second, in the words of Simon Brown LJ in Ex p Baker[1995] 1 All ER 73 , 91, "the demands of fairness are likely to be somewhat higher when an authority contemplates depriving someone of an existing benefit or advantage than when the claimant is a bare applicant for a future benefit.”
“It has to be remembered that consultation is not litigation: the consulting authority is not required to publicise every submission it receives or (absent some statutory obligation) to disclose all its advice. Its obligation is to let those who have a potential interest in the subject matter know in clear terms what the proposal is and exactly why it is under positive consideration, telling them enough (which may be a good deal) to enable them to make an intelligent response. The obligation, although it may be quite onerous, goes no further than this.”
“sufficient information to enable an intelligible response requires the consultee to know not just what the proposal is in whatever detail is necessary, but also the factors likely to be of substantial importance to the decision, or the basis upon which the decision is likely to be taken”. c. Consultation axiomatically requires the candid disclosure of the reasons for what is proposed if the undertaking to consult is not to be rendered largely nugatory: R v Barking and Dagenham LBC, ex parte Lloyd[2001] EWCA Civ 533 per Schiemann LJ at [13]. The true reasons for the proposals should be revealed in the consultation process if that process is not to be legally defective: see Laws LJ in R (Evans) v Lord Chancellor[2011] EWHC 1146 (Admin) at [27], [30], [33]. d. But, as was stated in R (United Co Rusal plc) v London Metal Exchange[2014] EWCA Civ 1271 ,[2015] 1 WLR 1375 at [51] and [85] per Arden LJ: “The adequacy of consultation must depend on the sufficiency of information in the context in which the consultation took place. Therefore the court cannot ignore information which was well known to the consultees even if it was not set out or referred to in the consultation document. Any other conclusion would lead to cumbrous and potentially self-defeating consultation exercises where the real issue is obscured by common knowledge.” “…the explanation provided by a consultant in its consultation document is not unfair unless something material has been omitted or something has been materially misstated.”
“…the presentation of the information must be fair. Thus it must be complete, not misleading and must not involve failure to disclose relevant information… Whether non-disclosure made the consultation so unfair as to be unlawful will depend upon the nature and potential impact of the proposal, the importance of the information to the justification of the proposal and for the decision ultimately taken, whether there was a good reason for not disclosing the information and whether the consultees were prejudiced by the non-disclosure, by depriving them of the opportunity of making representations which it would have been material for the decision-maker to take into account…””
“The obligation on the Council under s.5D of the 2006 Act was to “secure that such consultation as they think appropriate” was carried out before any change was made in the services to be provided through a children’s centre or before the closure of any such centre. That gave the Council a wide discretion as to what the consultation should comprise, subject only to the requirements of the Guidance. This stipulated who should be included among the consultees, and that any such consultation should make it clear how the needs of families with children under 5 would continue to be met under any proposed service reorganisation. It is well established that in order to be lawful, a consultation process must be procedurally fair. That means that it must take place at a time when the proposals are still at a formative stage; the proposer must give sufficient reasons for any proposal to permit of intelligent consideration and response; and adequate time must be given for such consideration and response: see e.g. R(Royal Brompton and Harefield HHS Foundation Trust) v Joint Committee of Primary Care Trusts[2012] EWCA Civ 472 at [8]-[10]; R(Moseley) v Haringey LBC[2014] UKSC 56 ,[2014] 1 WLR 3947 per Lord Wilson at [24]-[25]. As Lord Reed pointed out in Moseley at [36], where the duty to consult arises under statute, the context of the duty can vary greatly from one statute to another, and a mechanistic approach to the requirements of consultation should therefore be avoided.” “The Council was entitled to consult on the proposals which it had approved for consultation, rather than on something it did not propose: see Bailey and others v London Borough of Brent[2011] EWHC 2572 (Admin) at [90]. It is lawful for a proposer to indicate in the consultation document what his preferred option is; see Lord Wilson’s judgment in Moseley at [27]-[28] and Lord Reed’s at [41]. Fairness does not necessarily require the provision of information about options which have been rejected; if the duty to consult is a statutory duty, and the statute does not make it clear whether such information must be provided, the question will be whether in the particular context, the provision of such information is necessary in order for the consultees to express meaningful views on the proposal(s): see Lord Reed at [40].”
“The defendant accepts that even though there was no statutory requirement to consult in the present case, the consultation process which it did undertake must meet the requirements of a "proper" consultation, as encapsulated in the R v North and East Devon Health Authority ex parte Coughlan[2001] QB 213 , see per Lord Woolf MR at paragraph 108: … When applying those principles, it is important to bear in mind that one of the principal purposes, if not the principal purpose, of any consultation exercise is to enable consultees to identify and draw to the attention of the decision maker relevant factors which the decision maker may, either by accident or design, have overlooked when deciding upon a preferred option for consultation. The Coughlan principles do not require as their starting point an omniscient decision maker who will have correctly identified each and every relevant factor at the outset; there would be little point in having a consultation if that were to be the underlying assumption. If a consultation document makes it clear that a decision maker has not considered a particular factor, 'factor X', when deciding upon a preferred option, and a consultee contends that factor X should have been taken into account, and in response to that representation the decision maker agrees that factor X should be considered, then that is an example not of a flawed consultation process, but of a consultation process that has done the job that it was intended to do.”