Council promises positive progress on SEND pressures

The leader of Derbyshire County Council has said "positive progress" will soon be made on services for children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), despite large rises in both costs and the number of people who need support.

The council's costs to support children in special schools rose by £15m to about £38m in 2024-25, according to council documents.

Its budget for this financial year has a £31m deficit, which the council says is due to "significant increases" in the number of children with education, health and care plans (EHCPs).

EHCPs are legal documents that enable children to access the support they need from local authorities.

There were 6,790 children in Derbyshire with EHCPs in place in 2024, but that number rose to almost 8,000 by the spring of this year.

The council says the rise has in turn "put pressure on the budget" due to the cost of supporting children with EHCPs.

The authority is also facing pressure to complete outstanding EHCPs more quickly - as data shows only about 20% of council's EHCPs were issued within the legally required 20-week timeframe.

The Reform UK leader of the council Alan Graves said the government was "not too pleased" with the progress the council was making on SEND services during a recent "stocktake".

"However, I do know that before you can make the substantial changes we need, you have to put a lot of building blocks into place," he added.

"I think you'll suddenly see a huge movement of progress, positive progress."

Graves says more timely EHCPs will be an area where families will see change.

"We have changed some of the staff and that's a very important aspect of this," he said. "There are some massive changes coming through that are tangible.

"SEND is about giving services to the people out there, real people. I understand how upset they are."

The local authority is currently being monitored by Ofsted as part of a SEND improvement plan following a report last year that found "widespread and systemic failings".

It is using £28m in capital funding to create more special needs school places and carry out work on school buildings to extend capacity.

Home-to-school transport is also said to be an area of pressure, with an overspend of £7m in the last financial year - and more children qualifying for funded home-to-school transport due the increase in completed EHCPs.

The leader of the Derbyshire Conservatives Alex Dale - and former cabinet member for education - said delivering improvements for families "is going to take time".

He added: "We will work constructively with the new administration and want them to succeed in making further improvements - but I would urge caution against any suggestion that these deep-rooted challenges can be fixed overnight.

"We've not yet seen a credible or detailed plan from Reform UK that goes beyond the improvement plan already in place that we adopted, and we hope they will engage seriously with the scale of what's required."

Ofsted says it does not comment on individual local areas when approached.

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