The Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government has set out plans to address data sharing barriers across local public services, including a commitment to develop standardised data sharing agreements for use across central government and the wider public sector, and a direct linkage to the Department for Education's programme to introduce a Single Unique Identifier (SUI) for children across education, health and social care.
The commitments were contained in a written ministerial statement laid before Parliament on 16 June 2026 by Steve Reed MP (HCWS117), alongside a range of wider local service reform measures.
The statement's data-related passage read: "To address the barriers which hold back local authorities' and other partners' ability to integrate services, target prevention, and provide a more seamless user experience, we will be taking action on local government data sharing.
“The Government's Strategic Data Roadmap will support local public service reform through a range of data products and services designed to facilitate greater collaboration on data sharing and interoperability.
“We will also develop standardised data sharing agreements for central government and wider public sector, including local governments to use, reducing administrative burdens and speeding up processes.
“This will complement work already in train at the Department for Education which is focussed on improving multi-agency information sharing for the purposes of safeguarding and welfare of children, including the introduction of a Single Unique Identifier for children."
The Strategic Data Roadmap
The Strategic Data Roadmap was first set out in the government's Blueprint for a Modern Digital Government , published in September 2025.
The roadmap committed MHCLG to creating data standards for local authority data to support faster planning applications and better planning decisions, alongside broader DSIT-led work to build national data infrastructure. Reed's statement extends the roadmap's remit to encompass local public service reform more widely, describing "a range of data products and services designed to facilitate greater collaboration on data sharing and interoperability."
However, the statement did not publish the roadmap itself or identify which specific data products and services were being contemplated. The reference to "interoperability" suggested that the government would address the use of incompatible systems and data formats across councils, health bodies, police and other statutory partners, which make joining up information about individuals and households in practice extremely difficult even where a lawful basis for sharing exists.
Standardised data sharing agreements
The commitment to develop standardised data sharing agreements positions the agreements as a mechanism to reduce "administrative burdens and speed up processes", addressing the time and legal resource required to negotiate bespoke data sharing arrangements between individual controllers, which often acts as a significant brake on service integration.
Data sharing between public authorities in England currently operates through a number of legal mechanisms, including Part 5 of the Digital Economy Act 2017, Schedule 2 to the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, section 115 of the Health and Social Care (Community Health and Standards) Act 2003, and the general lawful bases under the UK GDPR.
Each statutory gateway carries its own requirements, restrictions and conditions, and the negotiation of individual data sharing agreements to give effect to them is resource-intensive for authorities that may lack in-house data protection expertise.
The ICO's Data Sharing Code of Practice (https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/uk-gdpr-guidance-and-resources/data-sharing/data-sharing-a-code-of-practice/), issued under section 121 of the Data Protection Act 2018, sets out what data sharing agreements should contain.
This includes: purpose, description of the sharing, legal basis, roles of controllers and processors, safeguards, retention periods and individual rights, but does not itself standardise the form of agreements across sectors.
The minister’s statement provided no detail on the mechanism, timeline or governance body responsible for developing the templates but suggests a programme that would do so, at least for central-to-local and local-to-local sharing arrangements.
The Single Unique Identifier (SUI) for children
Reed described the SUI as part of DfE's programme for "improving multi-agency information sharing for the purposes of safeguarding and welfare of children."
The Children's Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026, which received Royal Assent on 29 April 2026, gives the Secretary of State authority to introduce a Single Unique Identifier for every child to track children across education, health and social care systems. This unique identifier, currently being piloted, is intended to ensure children are always visible to local services and not lost to oversight, facilitating early intervention where a child is at risk.
The Act also introduces a new information sharing duty that makes it easier for important personal information to be shared between schools and social services, so that children receive earlier support when they need it and can be kept safe from harm.
The duty to share information applies to persons listed in section 11(1) of the Children Act 2004, including local authorities, integrated care boards, NHS trusts and foundation trusts, police forces, probation services and youth offending teams, along with education and childcare relevant agencies. Designated persons must include the consistent identifier when processing information about a child for safeguarding and promotion of welfare purposes.
The DfE is conducting a regional pilot to test the feasibility of using the NHS number as the consistent identifier across children's services. The SUI is a digital identification number given to every child that would stay with them throughout their childhood, and possibly beyond.
GDS Local, the new unit within the Government Digital Service established to support local government digital transformation set up in November 2025 has identified joined-up data capabilities as one of its priority workstreams.
The statement will be considered further by Parliament in due course. No timeline for the development or publication of the standardised data sharing agreements has been given.
