Minister confirms closure of ContactPoint

Mr Loughton announced last week the Department for Education's plans to permanently decommission ContactPoint. The Government revealed in May that it would scrap the database, which holds details of all children under 18 years (News, 19 May).

After the database was decommissioned, Mr Loughton said, the existing data would be safely removed and destroyed.

Guidance has been issued to local authorities on how to ensure ContactPoint is closed down in a managed, safe and controlled way.

In a written statement to MPs, the children's minister said, 'It has always been our view that it was disproportionate and unjustifiable to hold records on every child in the country, making them accessible to large numbers of people. Accordingly, we are exploring the practicality of a new national signposting service which would focus on helping practitioners find out whether another practitioner is working, or has previously worked, in another authority area with the same vulnerable child.'

The statement also outlined the department's intentions to make sure the development and implementation costs of the new service are kept to a minimum and offer value for money.

The Conservative party first suggested in October 2008 that they would scrap ContactPoint and replace it with small targeted databases to trace vulnerable children moving across boundaries (News, 2 October 2008).

The Liberal Democrats also said they would get rid of the database and use the savings for additional support for front-line workers (News, 24 Spetember 2009).

ContactPoint was rolled out nationally to all local authorities and frontline practitioners in November 2009.

It was originally intended to be launched in May 2009 but suffered numerous delays prompted by security fears.