12 December 2025

Dear Baroness Casey,

I hope this message finds you well.

I am writing in connection with your Best Value Inspection of Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council (the “Casey Report”, 2015) and subsequent work on child safeguarding and local authority performance.

I am currently researching the interaction between Virtual Schools, electronic Personal Education Plan platforms (often referred to as ePEP), and the wider pattern of children in care who appear to have fallen out of official tracking. My work includes a published series of books under the title The Stealing of Emily, and a forthcoming volume, Traffic Lights and Trafficked Lives, which focuses in particular on data systems used for looked-after children.

In the Rotherham context, there is now public documentation showing that:

• Virtual School Rotherham has used an electronic PEP system (“ePEP”) for PEPs and daily attendance returns for children in care; and
• ePEP is supplied nationally by vendors such as eGov Solutions (ePEP / eGov) and linked to Virtual School data flows in a number of local authorities.

However, I have been unable to identify any discussion in the Casey Report itself of:

• the Virtual School’s data systems in Rotherham (e.g. ePEP / eGov or equivalent platforms);
• the role of Virtual School leadership in relation to those systems; or
• any specific examination of potential data loss, missing records, or audit trails relating to looked-after children’s PEPs.

In order to understand the scope and limits of your original inspection, I would be grateful if you could clarify the following:

1. Which documents, if any, did you or your inspection team review in relation to:
   • Rotherham’s Virtual School and its data / case-management systems;
   • the use of ePEP / eGov (or any other electronic PEP platform) by Rotherham Council; and
   • the governance, contracts or performance of those systems?
2. Were any of the following individuals or entities specifically considered as part of your evidence base:
   • Debbie Barnes, in her later capacity as chair of Rotherham’s Improvement Board and/or as an improvement adviser;
   • Kieran Barnes, in his role connected with Virtual School / looked-after children in Lincolnshire;
   • Gary Daniels, and any companies associated with the provision or operation of the ePEP / eGov platform;
   • any other named Virtual School heads, data controllers, or IT providers involved in running Rotherham’s PEP and attendance systems?
3. If these matters were outside the terms of reference of your inspection, I would be grateful if you could confirm that explicitly, so I can cite that limitation accurately in my ongoing work.

I fully appreciate that you may not be able to comment on specific allegations or ongoing disputes. My purpose here is to understand what was and was not examined in the Casey Report, particularly in relation to Virtual Schools and ePEP / eGov systems, so that I do not attribute to your work a level of technical scrutiny that it did not claim to have.

Thank you very much for your time and for any clarification you are able to provide.

Yours sincerely,

Martin Newbold

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