1. Does your council hold records showing of the cash value of direct payment funds returned to your council? Are these recorded in the Local Authority accounts, or elsewhere?

2. Please can you provide figures for the cash value of direct payments repaid to the council for each of the last 5 years.

3. Please can you provide figures for the cash amount of the budget allocated by your council for direct payments for each of the last 5 years.

4. What happened to the returned funds? ie, which budget were they paid into to allow them to be rationalised in the council's accounts? I'm not looking for great detail here, just a question of were they added to general council funds, childrens's services, disabled children's services, etc.

5. Were the returned funds ringfenced, and if so what were the returned funds ringfenced to be used for?

In this request, whenever I refer to ‘direct payments’, please can you take this to mean a direct payment paid to a disabled child (or their family) for the purpose of meeting their social or care needs.