Information Sharing Duty 2026: What Safeguarding Professionals Need to Know
When can you share safeguarding information?
Do you need consent?
Does a concern need to meet a child protection threshold first?
And can GDPR prevent you from sharing?
These are some of the questions that safeguarding professionals have wrestled with for years and from 30 September 2026, a new statutory Information Sharing Duty comes into force in England.
Introduced through the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026, the duty creates a clearer legal requirement for relevant organisations and practitioners to share information where it is relevant to safeguarding or promoting the welfare of a child, and one of the most important messages is this:
Information sharing is not something that should only happen once a child reaches a child protection threshold.
Information can be vital much earlier when needs are emerging, risks are developing, professionals are trying to understand what is happening in a child's life or support could prevent concerns escalating. So, what does the new Information Sharing Duty mean in practice?
What is the new Information Sharing Duty?
The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026 inserted a new section 16LA into the Children Act 2004. In simple terms, where a relevant person holds information they consider relevant to safeguarding or promoting the welfare of a child, they must share it with another relevant person where they consider sharing it may help that recipient carry out their safeguarding or welfare functions.
The information could be about the child themselves or another individual connected to the child and this is significant.
For years, safeguarding reviews have highlighted situations where different professionals each held a piece of information, but those pieces were not brought together quickly or effectively enough. The new duty is intended to strengthen multi-agency information sharing and provide greater clarity for practitioners making those decisions.
Why has the Information Sharing Duty been introduced?
Effective safeguarding relies on professionals seeing the whole picture.
A school may know about persistent absence.
A health professional may know about difficulties within the family.
Police may hold information about an adult connected to the child.
A youth worker may have noticed changes in behaviour or peer relationships.
Another service may know about housing instability, domestic abuse, substance misuse or offending.
Individually, each piece of information may not appear to indicate significant harm. Together, they may tell a very different story.
Working Together to Safeguard Children 2026 already reinforces that no single practitioner can have a complete picture of a child's needs and circumstances and that information should be shared proactively and as early as possible. The new statutory duty strengthens that expectation.
The biggest misconception: “It hasn't met threshold yet”
This is perhaps one of the most important practical messages for safeguarding professionals. You do not need to wait until a situation reaches a child protection threshold before relevant safeguarding information can be shared. Safeguarding is much wider than responding to significant harm.
Information sharing can help professionals:
identify emerging needs
understand developing patterns of concern
assess risk
provide early help and support
make better-informed decisions
prevent concerns escalating
protect a child from harm.
So instead of only asking:
“Is this serious enough to share?”
we may need to become much more comfortable asking:
“Could this information help another professional understand this child's needs, assess risk, make a decision, provide support or take safeguarding action?”
That is an important cultural shift.
Ask these 3 questions
1. IS IT RELEVANT?
Does the information relate to safeguarding or promoting the welfare of a child?
2. COULD SHARING IT HELP?
Could it help another relevant professional or organisation assess need or risk, make a decision, provide support or take safeguarding action?
3. COULD SHARING CAUSE GREATER DETRIMENT TO THE CHILD?
Would sharing cause greater detriment to the child than not sharing? This exception is expected to apply only in limited circumstances.
Remember:
DON'T AUTOMATICALLY WAIT FOR:
A child protection threshold
Parental consent in every situation
A crisis
Every piece of the picture to be available
Safeguarding is often about joining together the pieces that different professionals already hold.
Do you need consent to share safeguarding information?
This has long been one of the biggest sources of uncertainty. Consent is not always required before safeguarding information can be shared.
Practitioners need to distinguish between consent to receive a voluntary service and the lawful basis for processing and sharing information.
A parent or child not consenting to information sharing does not automatically mean that relevant information cannot or should not be shared.
That does not mean we abandon transparency. Where it is safe and appropriate, children and families should understand how their information is used and why it may be shared. But: Transparency and consent are not the same thing. Practitioners should not allow uncertainty around consent to become an automatic barrier to safeguarding.
Record not only what you shared and with whom, but why you considered the information relevant and how sharing could facilitate safeguarding or promoting the child's welfare. Where information is not shared because of the detriment limitation, record that rationale clearly.
Moving beyond the fear of getting information sharing wrong
One of the challenges in safeguarding has not necessarily been an absence of information. Sometimes it has been professional anxiety about sharing it.
Practitioners may worry:
“What if I breach GDPR?”
“What if the parent complains?”
“What if I shouldn't have shared that?”
Those are understandable considerations, but fear of getting information sharing wrong can itself create safeguarding risk.
The new duty provides a much clearer framework for professional decision-making. The aim is not indiscriminate information sharing. It is relevant, necessary, proportionate and purposeful information sharing that helps professionals safeguard and promote children's welfare.
Information about adults can matter too
One particularly important aspect of information sharing is recognising that the relevant information may not necessarily be directly about the child. Information about another person connected to the child may help professionals understand the child's circumstances or potential risk.
For example, information relating to:
domestic abuse
coercive control
offending
substance misuse
exploitation
risks posed by another adult
family circumstances
another child's behaviour
could all potentially contribute to understanding a child's safety and welfare. This matters because safeguarding information rarely arrives conveniently labelled as “a child protection concern.” Often it is a collection of seemingly smaller pieces of information. Good safeguarding requires professionals to recognise when those pieces need to be connected.
Information sharing should be a dialogue
Good information sharing is not simply:
Send information → close the case → move on.
Effective multi-agency safeguarding requires communication. Where information is shared, professionals should understand what has happened with it, what action has been taken and whether further information or support is required. Acknowledgement, professional dialogue and feedback can be crucial. This also supports professional curiosity.
If you share information because you are worried about a child, but the response you receive does not address your concern, safeguarding responsibility does not simply disappear.
You may need to:
ask further questions
seek clarification
provide additional information
challenge a decision
escalate where necessary.
Sharing information is part of safeguarding practice, not the end of it.
What if you are requesting information from another organisation?
The new duty isn't only about deciding when to proactively share information. It is also relevant when practitioners need information held by another organisation to help safeguard or promote the welfare of a child.
When requesting information, practitioners should provide enough necessary and proportionate context for the receiving organisation to understand why the information is being requested and how it relates to the child's safeguarding or welfare.
Requests should also be specific and proportionate. Rather than simply requesting an entire case file or asking for “everything you hold”, consider:
What information do we actually need to understand this child's circumstances, needs or risk?
Equally, when responding to a request, organisations should consider what relevant information needs to be shared. This may mean providing a focused summary or the pertinent information rather than disclosing large volumes of unrelated personal data.
The principle remains the same: Share what is relevant to safeguarding or promoting the child's welfare and be able to explain your decision.
What does this mean for DSLs and safeguarding leaders?
This should not be treated simply as another piece of statutory guidance to circulate to staff.
The more useful question is: What needs to change in practice?
Safeguarding leaders should be asking:
Does our policy accurately reflect the new duty?
Do staff understand when information can and should be shared?
Are people still saying, “We can't share because we don't have consent”?
Are practitioners waiting for concerns to meet a perceived threshold?
Do staff understand how GDPR actually applies to safeguarding?
Can practitioners recognise when information about an adult may be relevant to a child?
Do our recording systems capture why information was shared or why it wasn't?
Do staff know who they can seek advice from?
Do we receive and acknowledge safeguarding information effectively?
Do practitioners follow up when they remain concerned?
And perhaps most importantly:
Does our organisational culture encourage appropriate information sharing or unintentionally make practitioners frightened to share?
7 practical actions organisations can take now
With the Information Sharing Duty coming into force on 30 September 2026, organisations should consider taking the following steps.
Review your information-sharing policy- Check that policies and procedures reflect the new statutory duty and do not contain outdated wording around consent, thresholds or data protection.
Test staff understanding- Don't assume circulating the guidance means people understand it. Use scenarios to explore questions such as: Would you share this? Why? Who with? What would you record?
Address the consent myth- Make sure staff understand that lack of consent does not automatically prevent appropriate safeguarding information sharing.
Strengthen recording- Practitioners should be able to demonstrate what information was shared, with whom, why and what happened next. Where a decision is made not to share relevant information, the rationale should also be clear.
Review multi-agency arrangements- The Department for Education has published strategic and operational template data sharing agreements alongside the statutory guidance. These provide a useful opportunity to review whether local arrangements support effective practice.
Build information sharing into supervision- Safeguarding supervision provides an excellent opportunity to explore professional judgement.
Ask:
What do we know?
What don't we know?
Who else might know something?
What information might another professional need from us?
Audit practice- not just policy
7. Your policy may say that information is shared effectively- But does casework demonstrate that?
Case sampling and safeguarding audit can identify:
delays
missed opportunities
poor recording
inappropriate reliance on consent
weak escalation
silo working
uncertainty around thresholds
gaps between policy and actual practice.
That is where assurance becomes particularly important.
Frequently asked questions about the Information Sharing Duty
When does the Information Sharing Duty come into force?- The new duty comes into force on 30 September 2026.
Does a concern need to meet a child protection threshold before information can be shared? No. Information sharing can support safeguarding and promoting welfare much earlier, including identifying emerging needs, assessing risk and providing support.
Do I always need parental consent to share safeguarding information? No. Lack of consent does not automatically prevent relevant safeguarding information from being shared. Practitioners should understand the legal basis on which information is being processed and shared.
Does GDPR stop professionals sharing safeguarding information? No. Data protection legislation must be followed, but it should not be treated as a blanket barrier to appropriate safeguarding information sharing.
Can information about a parent or another adult be relevant? Yes. Information about another named individual connected to a child may be relevant where it helps another professional or organisation safeguard or promote that child's welfare.
Is this only relevant to children's social care? No. The statutory guidance applies across a wide range of organisations involved in safeguarding and promoting children's welfare, including local authorities, health, police, education, early years, probation, prisons and youth justice, alongside certain providers delivering relevant services.
Does this replace Working Together to Safeguard Children? No. The Information Sharing Duty guidance should be read alongside Working Together to Safeguard Children 2026.
The key message
There is a simple principle sitting underneath all of this.
Safeguarding information sharing should not begin only when a situation becomes a crisis.
One professional may notice attendance.
Another may know about home circumstances.
Another may see behaviour.
Another may know about an adult posing a potential risk.
One piece of information may tell us very little.
But four pieces may completely change our understanding of that child's life.
The new Information Sharing Duty should therefore prompt more than policy updates. It should prompt conversations about confidence, professional curiosity, organisational culture and multi-agency practice.
Instead of safeguarding professionals automatically asking:
“Am I allowed to share this?”
perhaps a more useful starting point is:
“Could sharing this information help someone safeguard or promote the welfare of this child?”
Because information only protects children when the people who need it are able to see the picture it creates.
How RLB Safeguarding can help
At RLB Safeguarding, we support organisations to move beyond compliance and understand how safeguarding arrangements work in practice.
We can support organisations with:
safeguarding audits and assurance
policy and procedure reviews
safeguarding training
DSL and safeguarding lead development
safeguarding supervision
strategic safeguarding and governance support.
The introduction of the Information Sharing Duty is an ideal opportunity to review not simply whether your policies mention information sharing, but whether your staff have the confidence, knowledge and professional curiosity to share and act on information effectively.
If you would like support reviewing your organisation's safeguarding arrangements, training or information-sharing practice, contact RLB Safeguarding to discuss how we can help.
Resources
Statutory guidance- Information sharing to safeguard children and young people