Safeguarding: New Statutory Information Sharing Duty
For many years, serious case reviews and child safeguarding practice reviews have identified a recurring theme: agencies often hold pieces of information that, when shared, could have provided a clearer picture of a child's needs or risks.
Concerns about confidentiality, data protection, professional boundaries or uncertainty about legal powers have sometimes resulted in important information not being shared.
The new Information Sharing Duty, introduced through the Children's Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026, seeks to address this longstanding challenge. The Department for Education has now launched a consultation on draft statutory guidance that will support organisations and practitioners in implementing the duty when it comes into force in September 2026.
Consultation link: https://consult.education.gov.uk/mais-strategy-policy-and-programme-unit/statutory-guidance-for-information-sharing-duty/
Why Has a New Duty Been Introduced?
Children can be placed at greater risk when agencies work in isolation. Schools, health services, social care, police and other professionals may each hold information that appears low level on its own but becomes more worrying when considered alongside information held elsewhere.
The new duty is designed to create a clearer legal framework for sharing information where it is relevant to safeguarding and promoting a child's welfare. It aims to reduce uncertainty, encourage professional confidence and help prevent children from ‘falling through the cracks’ between services.
The consultation guidance explains that the duty will apply across a wide range of organisations involved in children's lives, including many of the agencies already subject to safeguarding duties under Section 11 of the Children Act 2004, together with relevant education and childcare providers.
Importantly, the guidance is not intended simply to create another administrative requirement. Instead, it seeks to support a cultural shift in how information sharing is understood and practised across sectors. The DfE has stated that the guidance should promote more consistent decision-making and provide practitioners with greater confidence about when information should be shared.
What Does This Mean for Schools?
For schools and colleges, the changes reinforce an important safeguarding principle: information sharing is a safeguarding intervention in its own right.
Staff already understand the importance of sharing concerns with the Designated Safeguarding Lead; however, the new duty extends that principle beyond individual organisations and emphasises the need for agencies to work together more effectively.
Data Protection Is Not a Barrier
One of the most significant messages emerging from the consultation is that data protection legislation should not be viewed as a reason to avoid sharing information when safeguarding concerns exist.
The new guidance aims to provide greater clarity about lawful information sharing and to help practitioners understand how safeguarding responsibilities sit alongside data protection requirements. This reflects long-standing safeguarding advice that information can and should be shared when it is necessary, proportionate and in the best interests of protecting children from harm.
Part of Wider Safeguarding Reform
The Information Sharing Duty should not be viewed in isolation. It forms part of a broader package of reforms within the Children's Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026, which seeks to strengthen multi-agency safeguarding, improve early intervention and create more joined-up services for children and families.
Alongside reforms relating to Family Group Decision Making, multi-agency child protection arrangements, children not in school registers and support for vulnerable children, the duty reflects a clear policy direction: safeguarding is most effective when agencies share information, identify risks early and work together around the needs of the child.
The consultation closes on 14 July 2026, with the statutory duty due to come into force in September 2026. While the final guidance may change following receipt of consultation responses, the direction of travel is clear. HM Government is seeking to move information sharing from being something practitioners sometimes feel uncertain about to something that is understood as a core safeguarding responsibility.
For safeguarding leaders, DSLs, headteachers and multi-agency partners, the challenge will not simply be understanding the new legal duty. It will be ensuring that systems, training and organisational cultures support confident, timely and proportionate information sharing that keeps children safe.
SSS Learning
15 June 2025