A plan setting out how children with special educational needs and disabilities will be supported in County Durham has been submitted to government.
Durham County Council has submitted its SEND Local Area Reform Plan (LARP) to the Department for Education, as all councils up and down the country have been asked to do.
Local authorities were asked to produce the plans as part of reform to SEND provision at national level.
Should the plan be approved, the council will receive more than £32m from government towards the deficit it has accrued in the cost of supporting young people with high needs. ‘High needs’ budget deficits are common across local authorities in the region, and nationally, and have been accrued because the funding being provided falls short of the unavoidable costs of meeting statutory requirements placed upon councils.
The authority has allocated £11m in an earmarked reserve in anticipation of having to cover the minimum ten per cent of the deficit write off requirements laid out by government, to 31 March 2028.
Cllr Cathy Hunt, Durham County Council’s Cabinet member for children and young people’s services, said: “The SEND reforms nationally present us with an opportunity to reshape the system within County Durham in a way that delivers better outcomes for children and young people while addressing longstanding financial and operational pressures.
“The work we have done in preparing our response plan has shown we have strong foundations in place, with good relationships between agencies and a willingness to collaborate.
“We want to convert our strengths into consistent, measurable system wide improvement – but it is imperative that the government delivers the funding we need to achieve this goal.
“It is disappointing we are having to set aside £11m of our taxpayers’ money towards the deficit we have unavoidably built up. This has been due to the funding we are given for supporting our young people with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities not being enough to meet the statutory demands placed upon us.
“Because this is a statutory service we are providing, that is supposed to be funded by specific grant funding from central government, the government should be covering the whole cost. Government should also be covering the interest we have lost in having to manage the deficits that have accrued over recent years, rather than place that burden on local council taxpayers to fund.”
A meeting of the council’s Cabinet on 1 July will hear that the national SEND reforms, set out in the government’s Schools White Paper programme, require all local authorities to produce a Local SEND Reform Plan, supported by a self-assessment.
Councillors will be reminded that in County Durham, like all areas across the country, demand for Education, Health and Care Plans has continued to increase “at pace.”
The report to the meeting says there is “strong evidence of early identification of need” within the county; as well as “strong relationships across agencies” and an “established culture of collaboration.”
The plan produced by the council sets out a delivery model centred on strengthening inclusion in mainstream provision, improving access to specialist support, embedding effective partnership governance, and securing better outcomes for children and young people while addressing financial sustainability.
Cabinet will hear that the council met the government’s target of 19 June to submit the plan.
Should it be approved, the council will receive £32.472m in High Needs Stability Grant. This amounts to 90 per cent of the deficit the council had accrued in supporting children with high needs by the end of the 2025/2026 financial year – a situation mirrored among local authorities nationally.
