ght of case decisions and accountability purposes  LA reporting purposes and generating performance indicators  statutory data requirements outside of the Annex A or 903 returns This finding suggests that much of the data is required by LAs and not for statutory returns. However, much of what is collected contributes to statutory returns. In our interviews with practitioners and data consumers, we found that this does not convey the bigger picture. For example, what the data matrix is not able to identify is the complexity of cases in relation to the worktime it takes to complete both the statutory and local data items, which, as participants explained, also has an impact on their feeling of burden. Wider conversations highlighted that Ofsted inspections drive additional information to be recorded. If Ofsted ask LAs about a certain type of data, it then becomes a fixed part of the data set that LAs routinely collect in preparation for future inspections; for example, Public Law Outlier (PLO) and deprivation of liberty data. Therefore, most information in this theme relates to the various elements of practice which practitioners and data consumers identified as ideal to make their practice more efficient. Data sharing It was found that there is some information and data, specifically about education, health, immigration status, and missing episodes, which is recorded either by other teams within the same service, or by other government departments such as health, education, or the police, and might be missing from the child/young person’s records. The IT systems used by the different teams and agencies (Virtual Schools, Home Office, Police, NHS) work in silos and are not connected to the CMS used for CSC services. Often, information is missing either because it has not