Child criminal exploitation in young males

As part of a PhD programme of research at the University of Central Lancashire, investigating risk factors for gang related activity and child criminal exploitation in young males, we are writing to request the following information. FOI requests have also been sent to all other local authorities in England, and the project has been approved by the university ethics panel (reference number: SCIENCE 0028 Study_4_v3).

Please could you provide the following information and where possible,

please can responses be split by gender (i.e. numbers of boys and girls).

In the past 12 months:

1) How many boys had a Child In Need plan?

2) How many boys had a Child Protection plan?

3) How many boys received Special Educational Needs Support?

4) How many boys had an Education, Health and Care plan (EHCP)?

5) How many boys were a Looked After Child?

6) How many Looked After Boys were placed

into your area from another area?

7) How many Looked After Boys were placed out of your area into another area?

8) How many boys were believed to be victims of criminal exploitation?

9) How many adults under the age of 25 were believed to be victims of criminal exploitation?

10) How many boys were living in temporary accommodation?

11) How many adults under the age of 25 were living in temporary accommodation?

12) How many boys were receiving support for substance misuse?

13) How many adults under the age of 25 were receiving support for substance misuse? 

I can confirm that the information requested is held by Lincolnshire County Council. I have detailed below the information that is being released to you.

1) 4,277 ( Excludes children who have had a CPPlan or a CiC episode in the same period)

2) 411

3) As of January 2025 census – 9,141.

4) As of 20th June 2025 – 6,791 with an additional 40 recorded as unknown.

5) 664

6) 435

7) 258

8) 31

9) Individual records may refer to an adult being at risk of criminal exploitation, however we do not record criminal exploitation as a category within Mosaic (System) to enable easy retrievability of the data and it would therefore require all safeguarding and Adult Care contacts received during the defined time period to be manually reviewed to identify if criminal exploitation was a factor and would take longer than the 18hours allowed under section 12 (1) of the FOI Act 2000.

10) 8

11) Lincolnshire County Council does not hold this information, please contact the District Councils.

12) LCC are unable to provide data on the wider population of the boys as this would require undertaking a manual exercise to review each child's full record. For example, on one particular day in the period there were 1929 boys between the ages of 0 & 17 in the children in need cohort.

Allocating 5 minutes per child record would equate to 160 hours of time required.

Section 12(1) of the Freedom of Information 2000 does not oblige a public authority to comply with a request for information if the authority estimates that the cost of complying with the request would exceed the appropriate limit. The appropriate limit is currently £450 or 18 hours at a cost of £25 per hour.

The exemption under section 12 is not subject to the public interest test Any refined request will be treated as a new request under the Freedom of Information Act.

13) Data from the National Drug Treatment Monitoring System (NDTMS) does not record age from 18 to 25 but does record it from 18-24 and 18-29, the numbers in substance use treatment for 2023/24 (the latest data released to the public by the Office of Health Improvement and Disparities) is:

• 18-24 – 209

• 18-29 - 474