In a statement to MPs, children's minister Kevin Brennan said that thedatabase, ContactPoint, was being developed by local authorities,voluntary and community organisations, and practitioners from acrosschildren's services, and that here had been 'substantial stakeholderfeedback' over the last few months.
He said that the Government had been looking at the impact of proposedchanges to the system.
'It is clear from the work we have done so far that we will need moretime than we originally planned to address the changes to ContactPointwhich potential system users suggested. The change to the timetable willmean that deployment of ContactPoint to the "Early Adopters" localauthorities and national partners will be in September or October 2008.'The rest will follow by May 2009.'
Mr Brennan admitted that the loss of the HMRC discs containing detailsof child benefit recipients 'has raised questions about the safety oflarge scale personal data in other Government systems'.
ContactPoint will not contain any financial information, such as bankdetails, or case information, for example case notes, assessments andmedical records, he added.
Mr Brennan also said that 40m would be available to support itsintroduction for local authorities, lead organisations and ContactPointimplementation projects until March 2009, with 'indicative fundingallocations' for local authorities of 27m in 2009/10 and 15m in 2010/11.