Free tool · England

Children's Home Location
Assessment Tool.

Enter a postcode to create a preliminary evidence report covering the local area, recorded crime, essential services, transport, environmental considerations and local residential provision.

Uses publicly available data
Takes a few minutes
Immediate preliminary report
Free to use, no Arc account
Currently for locations in England
No full address required

This tool gathers published evidence to support a Regulation 46 location assessment. It does not decide whether a property is suitable or replace consultation, local knowledge and professional judgement.

WHY PROVIDERS ASSESS A LOCATION

The evidence is public. It is just scattered.

Regulation 46 of the Children's Homes (England) Regulations 2015 requires a written assessment of the location of a home: its position in relation to local services and facilities, and any risks in the area that could affect the children living there.

Much of that work is professional judgement and conversation. You consult the host local authority and the police, read the safeguarding partnership's published priorities, walk the area at different times of day, and record how any concern will be managed. None of that can be automated.

The evidence gathering can be. Published data on crime, deprivation, services, transport, flooding and local-authority provision sits across a dozen sources, each with its own geography, publication cycle and caveats. This tool assembles that material for a postcode, dates it, cites it, and then sets out plainly what it could not establish.

WHAT THIS TOOL WILL NOT DO
Show the location of other children's homes — Ofsted redacts names and addresses
Identify exploitation networks, gang activity or missing-from-care patterns
Confirm that a school, GP or mental health service has capacity or accepts referrals
Give a suitability score, a risk rating or a view on Ofsted registration
Assess the property, its boundaries or its neighbours

Where the evidence comes from

Police recorded crime

Street-level data published by police forces, anonymised to approximate points. Categories, counts and monthly trend around the postcode.

Deprivation and geography

Indices of Deprivation, ONS postcode geographies and the rural–urban classification, each at its published geographic level.

Services and transport

Schools registers, NHS organisation data and open mapping data for stops, stations, roads, parks and community facilities.

Residential provision

Ofsted's published children's social care statistics, at local-authority level only, with regional and England comparisons.

Assess a location Free · No account required · England only