If you pay Council Tax in Cambridgeshire or Peterborough here is where a chunk of it goes.
If you commission or deliver services in Peterborough or Cambridgeshire, this is where FASD is already showing up in your budget.
For the 449 young people with FASD in our current 18-year-old cohort, the projected lifetime cost breaks down as:
• Employment, skills and lost productivity — £65.3m
• Adult social care and transitions — £39.2m
• Post-16 education and SEND — £32.7m
• NHS adult services — £27.2m
• Criminal justice — £17.4m
• Housing and family support — £8.7m
£190 Million for one year group.
None of this is new money entering the system. It is money already being spent, on people whose needs have not been named. Cambridgeshire has 17.8% of pupils on SEND support or an EHCP, and Peterborough around 15.4% — some of those children, a significant proportion, will have FASD and will never be told so. If they aren’t told, they can’t be properly supported.
The total for all those who have FASD, many of whom are undiagnosed equates to around £130 per year for each and every person living in the area, whether they have FASD or not. Commissioning services to prevent and identify FASD and appropriately support those with the lifelong condition would represent actions that save costs in the future
We would welcome an urgent conversation with anyone commissioning in this space or elsewhere.
#FASDGrowsUp #EveryonePlaysAPart #FASD #Cambridgeshire #Peterborough #SEND
These posts across September 2026 are only possible due the support of the National Organisation for FASD. In June 2026, the Charity published an in depth look at the cost of FASD in the UK. professional AI software was used to interrogate available national data so that a detailed report could be written about the impact of FASD to the UK.
That report can be found
here. https://nationalfasd.org.uk/the-cost-of-inaction-on-fasd/
After a discussion about whether the same software could be used to drill down into locally available data and interesting set of information appeared for Cambridgeshire & Peterborough as well as another set for Hertfordshire where the National Organisation has its office. The following posts reflect the information gathered for Cambridgeshire & Peterborough Please search my other posts / blogs throughout FASD Awareness month 2026 for a full picture of the current situation and needs in Peterborough & Cambridgeshire UK.
Brian Roberts
September 2026
