Regulation 46 and regulation 6
Location risk assessment evidence for children's homes and supported accommodation
The public evidence about the area around your children's home or supported accommodation, with the consultation letters, risk matrix and review record your location assessment needs for the calendar year.
Priced per children's home or per supported accommodation premises, for 12 months.
Add your home or premises and order Read the Sample Home pack Free templates
What it gives you
- The public data, gathered for youRecorded crime and its trend, exploitation indicators, road collisions, deprivation and what children's services record, each sourced and dated, in place of a day or two of searching.
- Consultation you can showLetters to the police and the host authority, with reminders, and a tracker of who was asked, when and what came back: your answer when an inspector asks who you consulted.
- A review record signed off by roleThe calendar year covered, how the review was done, what it concluded and who signed it off, kept in your account and ready to print.
- Private by designNo public page for any home. The Ofsted URN is checked and never kept, and the postcode is encrypted.
Below: what the pack is not and how your home stays private.
How it works
- Sign in and add each home or premises
Sign in with your email; there is no password. Add each home or premises by its Ofsted URN and postcode, privately in your account. The URN is checked and never kept, and a provider can upload its premises from a spreadsheet.
- Pay by card
One price each, however many an order holds. No VAT is added, and nothing renews or charges automatically.
- Download the pack, letters and review record
We email you when it is ready, usually within an hour of payment. Everything is on your order page for 12 months, with the dashboard and the action log.
- Review, sign off, and order again next year
Send the letters, keep the tracker, and sign off the review before 31 December; if it is not signed off, we remind you in October, November and December. Each calendar year's review is a new order.
Prices
For a children's home
£195 per home, for 12 months
One home's location assessment for the calendar year: the evidence pack, the consultation letters and tracker, the briefings and the review record with sign-off.
Opening a new home? The pre-registration pack for the registration application is £295.
A building of a multi-building home is a location of its own, as the inspection framework asks.
For supported accommodation
£95 per premises, for 12 months
Per premises, because each premises needs its own assessment every calendar year and a provider usually holds several; premises in one area share much of the evidence.
Each premises' own location assessment for the calendar year, with the same evidence pack, letters, tracker, briefings and review record as a children's home.
Many premises? Upload them from a CSV file or an Excel workbook in your account; each is checked and priced on its own.
One price each, however many an order holds. Pay by card; no VAT is added. Nothing renews or charges automatically.
Who must carry out a location assessment, and how often
A location assessment (often called a location risk assessment or locality risk assessment) is the registered person's written review of whether the place a children's home or supported accommodation stands in is appropriate and suitable for the children or young people who live there, made at least once in each calendar year after consulting each relevant person, which the guidance takes to include the police and the host local authority's children's services.
Children's homesRegulation 46(1)
“The registered person must review the appropriateness and suitability of the location of the premises used for the purposes of the children's home at least once in each calendar year taking into account the requirement in regulation 12(2)(c) (the protection of children standard).”
Children's homesRegulation 46(2)
“When conducting the review, the registered person must consult, and take into account the views of, each relevant person.”
Supported accommodationRegulation 6(2)(a)(i)
“reviewing the appropriateness and suitability of the location of each of the premises used as supported accommodation (“a location assessment”), and in doing so, consulting and taking into account the views of each relevant person”
Supported accommodationRegulation 6(2)(a)(ii)
“carrying out a location assessment of each of the premises used as supported accommodation at least once in each calendar year”
Read what regulation 46 asks or what regulation 6 asks of supported accommodation. It is evidence for the registered person's judgement, not legal advice.
Quotations: The Children's Homes (England) Regulations 2015 and The Supported Accommodation (England) Regulations 2023, Crown copyright, Open Government Licence v3.0.
The four steps, and the part of the pack for each
“collection of publicly available local data; consultation with appropriate local services; completion [of] a risk assessment; and development of risk management strategies.”
- Gatherthe public data, chapter by chapter
- Consultletters, reminders and the tracker
- Assessthe risk matrix and the children's views
- Act and reviewthe action log and the signed record
The chapters
- The home and its area
- What children's services record
- Children looked after and missing from care
- The recorded picture around the home
- Exploitation indicators
- Hazards near the home
- Services and opportunities
- Young people's health and justice
- Deprivation where the home stands
- Other children's homes in the authority
- Who to consult
Then the risk matrix, the action plan, the review record with sign-off and the inspector's questions answered.
Supported accommodation receives the same chapters in its own words: the premises, the young people living there, the registered service manager and the registered provider.
What the pack is not
- It supports, and never replaces, the registered person's judgement or the consultation. The police and the local authority must still be consulted, and we never contact anyone for you.
- It covers reported crime only, about two months behind, at anonymised map points and with no time of day. Rail crime is mostly British Transport Police's and absent, and exploitation is under-recorded by nature.
- It cannot see what only the police, the local authority or the children know. The consultation and the children's views are there for that.
- An area can change quickly. The pack is dated, and the dashboard shows the latest month.
- It may point towards a site being unsuitable. That is a proper outcome of a review.
- It is not a certificate. It evidences a review; it never approves a location.
Your home stays private
- No public page, search entry or map point for any home. You enter your home privately, in your account.
- The Ofsted URN is checked when you enter it and never kept.
- The postcode and your own label for the home are encrypted, and deleted with everything about the location 90 days after your year ends.
- Recorded crime within 200 metres of the postcode is left out of every figure, to leave out what is recorded at the home itself.
- Emails, receipts and the payment page name the location by a reference such as "Location K7Q2MX4PA9HD", never by your label, its kind or its area.
- UK Crime Statistics, which prepares the recorded crime, receives the postcode and that reference only, and deletes both after delivery.
Every page of the pack says it is confidential. The privacy notice sets out what is held and for how long.
The Sample Home: a completed example
A completed location risk assessment evidence pack as a children's home receives it, built from public data on 9 October 2026 with police data to August 2026. It is drawn from a point that is not a children's home, and the postcode, the local authority, the police force and the names of streets, places and schools are changed. Every figure is real.
Read the Sample Home pack (PDF, 29 pages, 668 KB) Read the staff briefing (PDF, 1 page, 61 KB) Read the placing authority summary (PDF, 1 page, 63 KB)
Free location risk assessment templates
Blank Word files for a children's home and for supported accommodation, with nothing in them but placeholders. No email asked.
- Consultation letters to the police and the host authority, with reminders
- A consultation tracker
- A risk matrix
- A prompt sheet for the children's or young people's views
- A review record with sign-off
Questions
Is there a set format for a location assessment?
No. Ofsted says: “There is no set format for location assessments.” The pack follows the Department for Education's four steps: gather the public data, consult local services, assess the risks, and plan how to manage them.
Is a location assessment the same as a location risk assessment?
Yes. The regulations and Ofsted say location assessment; many councils and police forces say location risk assessment or locality risk assessment. The risk matrix is one part of it, beside the public data, the consultation and the review record.
Will you contact the police or the local authority for us?
No. The registered person consults, and we never contact anyone on your behalf. The pack gives you the letters and their reminders, and the tracker records each reply, or that none came.
Does the pack count incidents at the home itself?
It is designed not to. Every crime recorded at a map point within 200 metres of the postcode is left out at every distance, which is where the police place the home's own call-outs and missing reports. It also leaves out some street crime close to the home, so your own records and the police consultation cover the streets nearest the door.
What happens after we order, and how long does it take?
You pay by card and the pack is made when the police-recorded crime for the postcode arrives. We email you when it is ready, usually within an hour of payment. The order page then holds the pack, the briefings, the evidence pack with the letters, the dashboard, the action log and the review record for 12 months.
What if something changes in the year?
Record a review for that reason in the account, such as a new placement or a concern from the police. After such a review you can ask for a fresh crime picture for the latest month at no charge, a few times in each year of access as the review page shows, and the pack is made again from it.
Can we use it before a home is registered?
Yes. A pre-registration pack for a proposed home is £295 and words the letters for the registration application. Enter the home with no URN; once it is registered, each yearly review is £195.
Does Ofsted need a location assessment when we register a new home?
Yes. Ofsted's guidance on applying to register a children's home sets no format, but applicants “will also need to consult relevant local bodies and services, including the police and local authority children's services”, and inspectors will ask for “evidence of your contact with the host local authority”. The pre-registration pack, £295, gives you the public data and the letters for the application.
Do we need a pack for each supported accommodation premises?
Yes. The regulations ask for a location assessment of each of the premises at least once in each calendar year. Premises close together in one area can share the area's evidence and the consultation, but each still has its own assessment. Each is £95 for 12 months, and a provider can upload its premises from a spreadsheet.
Who sees the postcode?
Only your account. We never ask for or hold the address: the letters leave it for you to write in. The pack prints the postcode on its cover alone, never in the staff briefing, the slides or the placing authority summary, and our own admin pages never show it.
The terms of sale and the privacy notice cover children's homes and supported accommodation.
For a children's home: £195 per home, for 12 months For supported accommodation: £95 per premises, for 12 months
Evidence for the location assessment of your home or premises
The public evidence about the area around your children's home or supported accommodation, with the consultation letters, risk matrix and review record your location assessment needs for the calendar year. It describes the area around the home or premises. It never rates the home, its staff or the children and young people living there.
- The location assessment evidence pack
- Consultation letters and the tracker
- Briefings to share
- The year's records
Add your home or premises and order Read the Sample Home pack