The Local Authorities (Annual Sufficiency Plans) (Wales) Regulations 2026 were made on 14 September 2026 and come into force on 26 October 2026. They set the form and minimum content of the annual sufficiency plans that local authorities in Wales must prepare and publish under section 75A of the Social Services and Well-being (Wales) Act 2014. For Welsh councils, the change is not simply administrative. The Regulations require a standard annual account of current need, recent placement activity, workforce pressures, market availability and forward demand for looked after children. That moves sufficiency planning further into the public domain and gives Ministers, partners and families a clearer basis for testing whether enough suitable provision exists.
According to the explanatory note, the purpose is to strengthen strategic planning and transparency around the duty in section 75(1) of the 2014 Act. That duty requires local authorities, so far as reasonably practicable, to secure sufficient accommodation provided by local authorities or by registered providers meeting section 6A(1) of the Regulation and Inspection of Social Care (Wales) Act 2016, within or near their areas, to meet the needs of looked after children. The legal context also matters. Section 75A was inserted by the Health and Social Care (Wales) Act 2025, and regulation 3 now requires every annual sufficiency plan to be completed using a template published by the Welsh Ministers on the Welsh Government website. In practice, that should make plans more comparable across Wales and reduce the scope for highly variable local presentation.
The Schedule begins with the children themselves. Each plan must include a written summary of the needs profile of looked after children in the authority area as at 30 September in the relevant preceding year. The Regulations define that profile as an evidence-based summary of the characteristics, circumstances and support requirements of children and young people who need care and support. The assessment has to cover age, language and protected characteristics, alongside the circumstances that contributed to vulnerability or entry into care. It must also address placement and care needs, social, cultural and relational needs, the position of older children approaching adulthood, and the needs of children who require integrated packages with education and health components or other complex arrangements. Separate from the data, councils must report how they engaged with children and young people to ascertain wishes and feelings when assessing need.
The reporting duties then turn to recent placement experience across two time points. Authorities must give figures for the number of children looked after as at 31 March in the second preceding year and as at 30 September in the relevant preceding year. For both periods, the plan must identify how many children were in cases where the authority had been unable to make arrangements under section 81(2) of the 2014 Act. Where that difficulty arose, the data must be broken down by children's home services, local authority foster parents and secure accommodation services, and then further divided by provider type. The provider categories in the Regulations are specific: local authorities, not-for-profit entities within the meaning of the 2016 Act, and providers that fall into neither group. That framing is likely to make the balance between public, not-for-profit and other provision far more visible in annual planning documents.
Location is treated as a distinct policy issue. The Schedule requires councils to report the number of children placed out of county and the number placed out of country during both historic periods, again with placement-type and provider-type breakdowns. The drafting is precise: out of county means outside the area of the authority that looks after the child, while out of country means outside Wales. The same sections require disclosure of the number of children placed in services operating without registration and the number of looked after children subject to deprivation of liberty orders. Bringing those figures into the core plan format matters. It means councils will have to account, in a single public document, for the use of distant placements, unregistered settings and restrictive legal arrangements rather than treating them as separate operational issues.
The Regulations are not limited to backward-looking data. Paragraph 12 of the Schedule requires a summary of the national, regional and local provision that was provided to, or available to, the authority as at 30 September in the relevant preceding year, again broken down across children's homes, local authority foster parents and secure accommodation, with provider type shown. The plan then moves into forecasting. Authorities must estimate full-year figures for the relevant preceding year and then forecast the plan year itself, including the number of children likely to be looked after, cases where arrangements may not be possible, expected out-of-county and out-of-Wales placements, use of unregistered services and deprivation of liberty orders. This creates a stronger planning model than a simple year-end return, because it requires councils to set out expected demand before the next financial year begins.
Risk management and workforce planning sit at the centre of the new format. The Schedule requires written summaries of the most significant current risks to sufficiency and the most significant forecast risks during the plan year, together with the steps being taken to mitigate them. Councils must also identify external factors that may affect success, including the provider market, regional collaboration and funding. The workforce provisions are especially detailed. Local authorities must summarise current workforce strategies and then set out their plan-year position on capacity, capability, recruitment and retention in services for looked after children. That includes areas of greatest risk, the causes of those risks, plans to address them, arrangements for training and career development, partnerships with education or training providers, the expected reliance on agency staff and the reasons for that reliance. The Regulations also single out Welsh-speaking roles and specialist roles, which gives the language and skills mix a formal place in sufficiency planning.
Data quality is another clear theme. The Schedule requires a written summary of current data limitations, projected data limitations for the plan year and the steps the authority will take to improve data quality. Each plan must also explain how it aligns with other relevant strategies and plans and, finally, how the authority intends to meet its duty under section 75(1) of the 2014 Act. Regulation 5 adds a safeguard for individuals involved in supplying the material. Information provided by a local authority to comply with the Regulations may not be used in evidence against an individual in criminal proceedings. The explanatory note states that this is intended to protect individuals from self-incrimination where the gathering or provision of information touches on matters capable of giving rise to criminal liability. The same note also records that a regulatory impact assessment has been prepared and is available from the Welsh Government. Taken together, the 2026 Regulations make annual sufficiency plans a fuller accountability document for children's care planning in Wales. For councils, the task will now extend beyond counting placements. They will be expected to show whether provision is available within or near their areas, suitable to assessed need, lawfully provided, supported by a sustainable workforce and backed by data robust enough to inform decisions before the next financial year begins.