Source: Ofcom published on this website Monday 23 February 2026 by Jill Powell

Under the UK’s Online Safety Act, sites that allow pornographic material must use highly effective age assurance to prevent children from readily accessing that content.

Within days of this duty coming into force in July 2025, Ofcom launched investigations into the providers of dozens of adult sites, including 8579 LLC. These websites were prioritised based on their user numbers.

Following investigation, we have fined 8579 LLC £1.35 million for failing to comply with these age check requirements. The company must immediately implement highly effective age assurance or face a daily penalty of £1,000.

Gathering accurate information from companies is fundamental to our job of making life safer online for people in the UK. These requests can help us to assess and monitor industry compliance with their safety duties, and firms are required, by law, to respond in an accurate, complete and timely way.

For failing to abide by these requirements, we have also fined 8579 LLC £50,000. We will impose a daily penalty of £250 on the company until it responds, or for 60 days, whichever is sooner.

George Lusty, Director of Enforcement at Ofcom, said:

“We’ve been clear that adult sites must deploy robust age checks to protect children in the UK from seeing porn. Those that fail to do this – or ignore legally binding requests from us – should expect to face fines.”

Source: Department for Education published on this website Monday 19 January 2026 by Jill Powell

The CPA is envisaged as an expert, accurate and decisive body that makes the multi-agency child protection system clearer, more unified and ensure there is ongoing improvements through effective evidence-based support.

This consultation seeks views on the CPA’s proposed functions, governance, and interaction with existing bodies. We welcome responses from children and families, frontline practitioners, local authorities, inspectorates, professional bodies, and voluntary, community and statutory organisations involved in safeguarding. Your feedback will help shape the future of child protection in England. 

This consultation will be open to the public for twelve weeks. Alongside this consultation, we will be working with children and young people as well as victims and survivors of abuse to seek their views on our proposals.  

The Department for Education is inviting views through four main sections of this consultation on: 

• The overview, scope and design principles of the CPA 

• Proposals for how the CPA will provide leadership and oversight of the child protection system. 

• Proposals for how the CPA will provide system learning and support.  

• Proposals for how the CPA will drive system improvement in the child protection system.  

• Proposals for how the CPA will be structured and engage with other organisations.  

Share your views

Closes 5 Mar 2026

Contact

ChildProtectionAuthority.CONSULTATION@education.gov.uk

Further Information

Establishing a Child Protection Authority consultation document.pdf

Source: Department of Health and Social Care published on this website ednesday 4 February 2026 by Jill Powell

Children with cancer will have their travel costs paid for, with a new government support package worth up to £10 million a year.

For every parent of a child with cancer, each day presents real challenges, not only in confronting the disease itself, but also in managing the considerable demands and costs associated with transporting their child for specialist treatment.

More than a third of these families must travel over an hour to reach hospital. There are 13 expert centres caring for children with cancer across England, with many young patients and their families face long and frequent journeys, sometimes several times a week, over many months or even years.

The financial burden can be significant, with petrol costs, train fares and lost earnings making an already difficult time, even harder. For some families, it could mean money that means heating their home for fewer hours, or going without fresh, nutritious food at dinner time. These are choices no parent should ever be forced to make.

This commitment sits alongside decisive action to transform cancer care for children and young people; including improving hospital food, ensuring medical psychosocial care during treatment, expanding genomic testing, and detecting cancers earlier when treatment is most effective.

The upcoming national NHS food standards review will ensure young cancer patients have access to high-quality, child-friendly food, including outside mealtimes.

The government will also improve the experience of those children who have to stay in hospital. The NHS and Starlight’s Play Well toolkit will help services deliver high-quality play provision for children, while youth support coordinators will help teenagers and young adults with education, emotional support and fertility concerns.

Furthermore, mental health support will be standardised for all young cancer patients during diagnosis, treatment and long-term follow-up, recognising the experience of cancer often surfaces years after treatment ends.

Taken together, these measures will ensure that when a child faces cancer, their family can focus on what matters most, being by their side and helping them get well.

This follows a series of reforms announced as part of the National Cancer Plan, including measures to improve access to specialists in rural and coastal communities, a crackdown on illegal underage sunbed use, improved bowel cancer screening to catch thousands more cases earlier and a new partnership to support England’s 830,000 working-age cancer patients to remain in employment during and after treatment.

Source: Children’s Commissioner published on this website Wednesday 14 January 2026 by Jill Powell

• Second report into illegal children’s homes by Children’s Commissioner shows one year on, vulnerable children are still being housed in caravans, holiday camps or AirBnBs – some for as long as three years 

• Number of illegal placements costing £1 million per child rises, despite these settings being unable to provide safety or care – at an estimated total cost of £353 million to the taxpayer 

• Most children placed in illegal homes have mental health or additional educational needs – more than half have Education, Health and Care Plans 

• “This is what failure looks like”: Children’s Commissioner calls for specialist foster care, more children’s homes and a new focus for reforming children’s social care 

More than half of children housed illegally by councils have Education, Health and Care Plans, new data from the Children’s Commissioner confirms – as the number of illegal placements costing more than £1 million per child has risen since last year. 

One year on from the Commissioner’s first report into local authorities’ use of illegal homes – including AirBnBs, holiday camps and caravans – to accommodate children in care, data shows very little has changed: on 1^st September this year, there were 669 children living in illegal homes, down from 764 on the same day last year.  

Nearly 60% of these children have complex additional needs or disabilities requiring an Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP), meaning they likely also receive support from other services beyond social care, while more than one third (36%) are receiving support from child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS). 

Of the 669 children placed illegally, 89 have been living in the same illegal placement for more than one year. While most are over 15, there are some children of pre-school age growing up in illegal children’s homes.  

The average duration of these illegal placements is a little over six months. One child was at put in a holiday camp for nearly nine months, another was in a caravan for more than four months and a handful of children remained in an illegal home for more than three years. 

The average weekly cost of a placement was more than £10,000 – the equivalent to more than half a million pounds over the course of a year. In total councils across England have spent an estimated £353 million on illegal children’s homes in 2025, of which 36 placements had already cost £1 million each by 1^st September.  

Today’s data underscores the crisis in children’s social care, with children – many extremely vulnerable or with complex needs – placed in poor quality placements at an exorbitant cost to taxpayers.