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The number of public law care and supervision applications under section 31 of the Children Act 1989 in November 2007 and November 2008 are given in the following table. Public law cases are those brought by local authorities or an authorised person (currently only the NSPCC). Figures relate to the number of children that are subject to each application and have been rounded to the nearest 10. Please note that 2008 figures are provisional.
Comparisons between single months should be made with caution as the monthly figures are subject to more volatility than those covering longer time periods.
November 2007 November 2008 Family proceedings courts1 920 1,090 County courts2 240 160 Total 1,150 1,240 1 There have been data quality issues with figures for family proceedings courts. A new method of collection was introduced in April 2007 which has improved the coverage and completeness of data. 2 Research undertaken on behalf of Ministry of Justice has identified that some cases that have transferred from the family proceedings court to the county court have been incorrectly recorded as new applications in the county court, thus inflating the reported number of new applications through double counting (see Masson et al 2008). Source: HMCS FamilyMan and manual returns, as at January 2009