London Daily

Focus on the big picture.
Friday, Oct 10, 2025

Councils in England facing funding gaps plan to cut special needs support

Councils in England facing funding gaps plan to cut special needs support

Cash-strapped local authorities, dealing with years of accumulated shortfalls, are having to reduce education and care packages
Councils in England, facing a funding shortfall of more than half a billion pounds for educating children with special needs, are planning spending cuts and service reviews, according to figures compiled by the Observer.

Campaigners fear children could lose some of their support as local authorities try to clear yawning historical deficits, with government rules stopping them using other reserves to help to fund the special educational needs and disabilities (Send) system.

Figures covering 131 of England’s 151 “upper tier” local authorities show the combined forecast “overspend” on high needs budgets comes to £503m for the 2020-21 financial year.

The figures were obtained from freedom of information requests and council documents, and show forecasts made late in the financial year.

Surrey council confirmed it overspent its high needs budget by £35m in 2020-21, and is forecasting a further overspend of £24m in 2021-22. Kent forecast an overspend of £35.8m in 2020-21, and 14 other councils forecast overspends of £10m to £18m.

Cambridgeshire has a forecast deficit of £13.7m in 2020-21. It is planning to reduce top-up funding for Send children in mainstream schools, as well as launching a variety of reviews covering individual support packages. A council spokesperson said: “In addition to the continuing rise in the number of education, health and care plans (EHCPs) being allocated to those in need, we are seeing an increase in the complexity of need among our children and young people. Our funding allocation is not sufficient to adequately match the increase in demand.”

Cheshire East is planning to encourage older students with EHCPs to take up “supported internships”, which normally last a year and include unpaid work placements of at least six months, as an explicit way of reducing the council’s support costs and shortening the time for which it has to fund EHCPs.

“You can expect councils to look much more closely and engage in more sharp practice around when and how to cease post-16 placements,” said Tania Tirraoro, co-director of campaigning website Special Needs Jungle. “Because long-term structurally that’s a large part of the increase in costs.”

Many councils are increasing the number of local special school places to cut costly placements outside the area. Annual reviews of EHCPs are also set to increase. “The strong implication from some of these plans is that the local authority will be seeking to cease to maintain EHCPs more aggressively than they previously have been,” said Tirraoro.

The Send system has been engulfed in a crisis of underfunding since 2014, when the Children and Families Act increased the range of ages of children and young people with Send that councils had to support – but the government didn’t provide the necessary money.

The government is now sharply increasing high needs funding – by £780m in 2020-21, with a further £730m in 2021-22 – but while overspends have fallen since last year, they remain doggedly high.

“The additional funding is not sufficient,” a Surrey council spokesperson said. “The 2021-22 increase for Surrey was 9%. However, as demand for EHCPs is increasing at 10%, it does not address the historic shortfall. To put this in context, demand and inflation is likely to lead to increased costs of £34m compared with the grant increase of £16m.”

Surrey now has a high needs deficit of more than £80m, accumulated over successive years. It is not among the five councils to have reached a “safety valve” agreement with the government that will provide additional funding in return for under taking certain savings measures.

Gillian Doherty, of campaign group Send Action, said: “Early intervention and the strengthening of mainstream provision can only happen if there is serious and sustained investment in support. What we’re actually seeing is the opposite, with the Department for Education using safety valve agreements to coerce councils into making cuts in return for financial bailouts, for example by driving mainstream schools to meet a higher level of need in a more cost effective way while miraculously maintaining the quality of provision.”

A spokesperson for the department said: “We recognise that pressures on high needs have contributed to some councils facing large deficits on their dedicated schools grant. We are working through a range of means to tackle these, which includes a targeted intervention programme for those local authorities with the highest deficits to rapidly improve their high needs systems and make them more sustainable long-term.”
Newsletter

Related Articles

0:00
0:00
Close
California County Reinstates Mask Mandate in Health Facilities as Respiratory Illness Risk Rises
Israel and Hamas Agree to First Phase of Trump-Brokered Gaza Truce, Hostages to Be Freed
French Political Turmoil Elevates Marine Le Pen as Rassemblement National Poised for Power
China Unveils Sweeping Rare Earth Export Controls to Shield ‘National Security’
The Davos Set in Decline: Why the World Economic Forum’s Power Must Be Challenged
France: Less Than a Month After His Appointment, the New French Prime Minister Resigns
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán stated that Hungary will not adopt the euro because the European Union is falling apart.
Sarah Mullally Becomes First Woman Appointed Archbishop of Canterbury
Mayor in western Germany in intensive care after stabbing
Australian government pays Deloitte nearly half a million dollars for a report built on fabricated quotes, fake citations, and AI-generated nonsense.
US Prosecutors Gained Legal Approval to Hack Telegram Servers
Macron Faces Intensifying Pressure to Resign or Trigger New Elections Amid France’s Political Turmoil
Standard Chartered Names Roberto Hoornweg as Sole Head of Corporate & Investment Banking
UK Asylum Housing Firm Faces Backlash Over £187 Million Profits and Poor Living Conditions
UK Police Crack Major Gang in Smuggling of up to 40,000 Stolen Phones to China
BYD’s UK Sales Soar Nearly Nine-Fold, Making Britain Its Biggest Market Outside China
Trump Proposes Farm Bailout from Tariff Revenues Amid Backlash from Other Industries
FIFA Accuses Malaysia of Forging Citizenship Documents, Suspends Seven Footballers
Latvia to Bar Tourist and Occasional Buses to Russia and Belarus Until 2026
A Dollar Coin Featuring Trump’s Portrait Expected to Be Issued Next Year
Australia Orders X to Block Murder Videos, Citing Online Safety and Public Exposure
Three Scientists Awarded Nobel Prize in Medicine for Discovery of Immune Self-Tolerance Mechanism
OpenAI and AMD Forge Landmark AI-Chip Alliance with Equity Option
Munich Airport Reopens After Second Drone Shutdown
France Names New Government Amid Political Crisis
Trump Stands Firm in Shutdown Showdown and Declares War on Drug Cartels — Turning Crisis into Opportunity
Surge of U.S. Billionaires Transforms London’s Peninsula Apartments into Ultra-Luxury Stronghold
Pro Europe and Anti-War Babiš Poised to Return to Power After Czech Parliamentary Vote
Jeff Bezos Calls AI Surge a ‘Good’ Bubble, Urges Focus on Lasting Innovation
Japan’s Ruling Party Chooses Sanae Takaichi, Clearing Path to First Female Prime Minister
Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Sentenced to Fifty Months in Prison Following Prostitution Conviction
Taylor Swift’s ‘Showgirl’ Launch Extends Billion-Dollar Empire
Trump Administration Launches “TrumpRx” Plan to Enable Direct Drug Sales at Deep Discounts
Trump Announces Intention to Impose 100 Percent Tariff on Foreign-Made Films
Altman Says GPT-5 Already Outpaces Him, Warns AI Could Automate 40% of Work
Singapore and Hong Kong Vie to Dominate Asia’s Rising Gold Trade
Trump Organization Teams with Saudi Developer on $1 Billion Trump Plaza in Jeddah
Manhattan Sees Surge in Office-to-Housing Conversions, Highest Since 2008
Switzerland and U.S. Issue Joint Assurance Against Currency Manipulation
Electronic Arts to Be Taken Private in Historic $55 Billion Buyout
Thomas Jacob Sanford Named as Suspect in Deadly Michigan Church Shooting and Arson
Russian Research Vessel 'Yantar' Tracked Mapping Europe’s Subsea Cables, Raising Security Alarms
New York Man Arrested After On-Air Confession to 2017 Parents’ Murders
U.S. Defense Chief Orders Sudden Summit of Hundreds of Generals and Admirals
Global Cruise Industry Posts Dramatic Comeback with 34.6 Million Passengers in 2024
Trump Claims FBI Planted 274 Agents at Capitol Riot, Citing Unverified Reports
India: Internet Suspended in Bareilly Amid Communal Clashes Between Muslims and Hindus
Supreme Court Extends Freeze on Nearly $5 Billion in U.S. Foreign Aid at Trump’s Request
Archaeologists Recover Statues and Temples from 2,000-Year-Old Sunken City off Alexandria
China Deploys 2,000 Workers to Spain to Build Major EV Battery Factory, Raising European Dependence
×