Reform councils to cut SEN spending

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.. according to the Lib Dem’s. Can they even do this? My DC isn’t SEN but her class has 5 TAs mainly as 121s and I dread what would happen if their funding is removed. Our council isn’t Reform led but they’re pretty neck on neck in no overall control.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2025/apr/24/ed-miliband-energy-pricing-keir-starmer-nigel-farage-latest-live-uk-politics-news

Shocker. I'm sure most Reform voters are the type that post on FB that "there was no SEN in my day" so it won't bother them.

Nice ! (Not)

Given the views of Farage towards SEN in recent weeks it wouldn’t surprise me if they tried.

my area are now ‘lucky’ enough to be under reform and as a SEN parent and someone who works in SEN I am scared what may come. It was bad enough when we were under Conservative control

Will they legally be allowed to do that? God I hate them.

They can do it & they will. They’re firmly in the “ADHD etc don’t exist” camp.

Of course they will, they love punching down.

And so it begins.

Gosh what a surprise. If only there had been signs they were complete shits before people voted for them.

But then again, I imagine a lot of people who voted for them don’t care about this at all. After all, most SEN can be solved with proper parenting right??

Well, maybe it can be a wake-up call for us SEN parents to actively campaign against them in future elections (as if we don't already have enough on our plates).

No idea if they can or they can’t but it’s hardly surprising. This is what people have voted for, and most of their supporters are right behind it.

I know I went out to vote strategically in order to try and keep them out. I know others who did the same. Sadly it wasn’t enough this time around.

I am not quite sure how much they actually can cut. There are local formulas for the bit of a school budget that is notionally for sen, but I don't think they can not give this money at all and academies aren't funded via the lea.

In terms of other aspects of sen funding a lot of it has statutory frameworks.

I think they'd need to be able to change the send code of practice and the national funding formula to really impact it.

That's not to say I dont think they will be hostile and actively try to minimise costs where they can, but LAs are already like that, especially if they are a safety valve area.

Isnt education a statutory right for all children? Also they can’t discriminate against disabled children. So they’d have a hard time axing legally required provisions. I can believe they’d bloody try though, and make it even harder to access.

Sadly there’s not much left to axe around my area regarding SEN settings and schools, as there’s been little or no investment in provision for years.

Lib Dem's have a lot of form for this kind of scaremongering historically. I doubt Reform would be able to do this and my reading of that article was that the Lib Dem's were making more of Farages "thinking aloud" about the increases in autism diagnosis than his words warranted.

Isn't that discrimination? Surely people can sue.

To be fair, that piece is just speculation and one of the reasons given in my county for people voting reform was the cutbacks in SEN spending. So, they would be very unpopular with their voters if they did this.

Local authority funding as is made up of 'budget pots'. Our local authority have already decided their budget for this financial year so it would be quite difficult to change funding allocations immediately as they've already been made. However, that doesn't stop the councillors from blocking additional funding (SEN unfortunately is always massively over budget) and you may see visible cuts in assessments, EHCP funding etc, though again this may not become visible until the next financial year. Given that the Reform party leader has publicly said that he believes SEN is over diagnosed I suspect that funding for EHCNA (the assessment phase of EHCP) will be most visibly hit. As there's not enough funding for educational psychologists etc anyway, if they then decide to make cuts, they will then hit the problem most councils have of parents appealing and taking their case to judicial review and the statutory obligation to pay for private assessment when a local authority fails to meet time frames. SEN departments in local authorities can be assessed by Ofsted and can fail the inspection. Which then requires the local authority to submit and adhere to an improvement plan, which then costs even more money than the cuts they decide to make! Local authority councillors don't get to rewrite codes of practice, so they can be held accountable. Cutting SEN funding could also ultimately lose a local Councillor the 'we like you' vote.

Exactly the same here, Reform took our area - unfortunately not surprised, we have a massive amount of elderly and it was heavily impacted with rioting idiots last summer.

I saw Old Nige's (again totally unsurprising) comments on Sen children last week so I'm fully braced for cuts and more bs to follow.

The key word here is claim as in 'Lib Dems claim'

This is fake news. Clearly The Guardian are feeling very threatened by Reform to have have published such an article. It is clickbait and scaremongering.

Reminds me of the articles you see in the Daily Fail where so minor government person speculates about Putin using Nuclear Weapons...

There's a big gap between saying nonsense to influence gullible voters and breaking the law. The Children and Families Act 2014 obliges councils to fund SEND provision. If Reform councillors instruct officers to break the law the government will intervene.

There is a crisis in SEND funding because most councils don't have the funds to meet legal obligations but it's outside the remit of councillors to unilaterally withdraw SEND support.

@Charlize43 he has indeed made comments about SEN though - it’s not beyond the realms of likelihood

The sad truth is we already have a system which largely relies on the parents, and schools, being able to fight against the system. It seems very likely that is going to become even more likely

So they can’t actually set the budget/cut the budget?

This is reform we’re talking about here. Given their contempt for minority groups I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they cut SEN funding. It’s what people with their ideology do.

Farage has already said he wants to sack all DEI workers because councils are spending too much on equality and diversity, and banning WFH. This will hugely affect disabled workers but no one gives a shit because they don’t think things through. That’s one way in which they are showing utter contempt for people with disabilities and other minority groups. Cutting SEN funding will just be the another.

My thoughts exactly. The guardian is a spam left wing rag. Wouldn’t trust it, like I don’t trust the daily mail.

Why are they printing claims rather than facts. More to the point, why are sensible people taking it seriously. It’s like the Daily mail saying the Labour Party are going to tax education, cut disability benefits and axe pensioners heating allowances. Oh. Even the daily mail didn’t claim that in advance.

Let’s wait for the facts.