To ask you to explain SEND funding and bankrupt councils to me?

[Myanna]

I've read a few articles like this one:

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2026/feb/05/send-costs-bankrupt-english-local-authorities

But I don't understand why the cost of funding SEND is so high that it's going to potentially/actually make most councils insolvent.

It's not like provision is generous or easy to get, from what I've read (I don't have a child who is supported).

Were these kids previously just not supported in any way by the state and was it left to families to cope as best they could?
Are these kids who previously wouldn't have survived, but now do because of better medical care and therefore need a lot of help?
Is this private equity running enterprises and charging huge amounts to local authorities?
Is it just inflation and the cost of employing people?

I really don't know much about this at all but I'm sure many on here do, so I'd really welcome your knowledge.

Local authorities spend £200 million per year hiring lawyers and barristers to fight appeals in which they 'win' about 1% of cases. https://www.specialneedsjungle.com/las-win-none-25k-send-appeals-over-200m-shocking-announcement/#:~:text=In%202024%2D25%2C%20SENDIST:%20*%20Received%20over%2025%2C000,rumored%20for%20release%20in%20early%20January%202026.

It's pretty shocking.

Most will consider that money well spent if it means delaying a high cost placement by a year or two, that’s the perversion of the system.

The vast majority of children in mainstream school are not transported to and from school so those that are will have an identified need none of us know why thst is is but transport is just given on a,whim.

The sad thing is they do this as even the cost of the lawyers you mention is cheaper than instantly providing the provision and therefore paying for it for longer.

Autism and adhd are massively under diagnosed and unsupported. Autism rates are only 1.7% in the UK. Maybe step away from the Daily Wail and MN threads .

Loads on children are transported to school. We have reams of school busses turning up at our schools. one firth of school transport costs in my LA are for children without needs going to mainstream. We also get children in taxis who have moved from out of area and centrally allocated a school over 3 mikes away but not on a route. Its just you get economies of scale. The children can generally walk to a central pick up point and there is enough of them to fill a coach. Some SEN schools fill a minibus from one or two villages., but others have small cohorts from an enormous catchment so you cant get economies of scale.

A lot of that is nothing to do with SEND funding.

That was supposed to quote @Fearfulsaints

I'm not saying we should refuse access to immigrants with children with complex needs, but just giving one contributory factor as to why SEN costs have gone up significantly in the past 10 years. Some of these children have parents who are drs, teachers etc who are making a significant contribution to our society and we shouldn't exclude them due to their child's additional needs.

You do realise, don't you, that most school transport is for children who live more than the statutory walking distance away from their schools, i.e. nothing whatsoever to do with SEN?

Many children with SEN qualify purely because there aren't enough specialist schools so that they too live beyond statutory walking distance.

What use is it to parents having enough time to get their children to school if there is no public transport or their child can't use it, and they don't have a car?

The thing is that councils don't organise these things sensibly anyway. I often suspect taxi companies add a nought or two to their estimates as soon as they are approached by councils for school run routes.

I know it would take investment, but if a few councils got together and organised their own transport, employing their own drivers, they could save themselves a fortune and even make money out of making the vehicles available for other services during the day.

I don't know why anyone is surprised. There has been a real time cut in school funding, while the curriculum got harder and stricter. Of course that will lead to more children unable to cope. Schools have less money, so the only way to get enough to support the child is an ehcp.

I am convinced that one of my children would have made it through mainstream primary if they had been born a decade or so earlier, as teachers would have had more flexibility and per pupil funding. As it is, they go to the nearest state school for autistic children, which is of course not near, as they closed down a load of special schools in the name of "Inclusion". There is taxi transport with three kids, a chaperone and driver.

Take away the school transport and I can no longer work. So goodbye to the taxes I pay and pension contributions for future and hello life on benefits with career progression halted. Sure benefits would come from central government, not council, but it is still taxpayers who would be funding it.

How do you know the children can walk to school? They might be physically able to walk but dangerous, e.g. if they have a propensity to run or get spooked by traffic noise. No council arranges a taxi for the fun of it.

Yes, taxis here too. No idea about the circumstances at play but it seems so very common now.

Except they could make a rule that if you don't work/have another child to get to school and have a mobility car you have to drive your own kid to school. I know a couple of families with very high need children, parents don't work, get highest rates DLA for the kid and have a mobility car, the council is still spending £100 a day to get the kids to special school in a taxi.

I don't blame the parents at all for not working as the kid is such high needs. Also, they have a right to school transport for their child so who wouldn't take that? Nobody would just choose off their own bat to spend two hours a day driving their kid to school when someone else has to do it.

Your right
My LA do have their own mini buses and drivers but not nearly enough so they put contracts to tender yearly and tend.to go with the cheapest private hire buses
The quality of drivers will vary massively, some have very good understanding of the needs of the children and some have very little
Same for the P/As we have some excellent P/As but its very hit and miss.

I know but people quote the transport costs as a whole and dont take out the bit that relates to non sen. So their big scary figures are a good 20% too high. They always want to cut the budget for the most vulnerable and take away their transport, but maybe non sen children can get themselves to school or pay. (Not my solution)

I wondered why this was in the news now, when the government has already announced an extension of the override and that funding will be centrally managed after that.

LAs are just agitating to get the government to explain what will happen to the deficits at the end of the override as its not clear of they will be written off. Which seems fair enough.

But yet again vulnerable children are being blamed rather than political choices like austerity, not being allowed to build special schools and the way accounts are structured.

My experience of school transport.

I had to walk my DD (who got transport due to distance not SEN) to a pick up point. (Well drive, as I was then driving her sister to her allocated school which was no where near to orher school!). She was picked up by a taxi, who had already picked up three other children, and then dropped them at at two different schools (including a sibling pair, one at each school).
Meanwhile my neighbour, who had a child with SEND, was picked up by a council minibus from the door.

Oth very appropriate for our circumstances.
Although the council could save them a fortune by placing siblings in the same school. Or catchment areas, so the children on the edge of town weren't be scattered all over the place as they didn't live close enough to any school.

So we have a mobility car for my son i don't work but my dh and uses the car to get to work this is absolutely within the rules
Have you ever been to a special school in the mornings when they are getting children off transport?
For both staff and children it is far safer for them all to be arriving at the same time on transport as its like a milliary operation getting 200+ kids with significant disabilities and challenging behaviour into class safely
Can you imagine how disruptive it would be for everyone for parents arriving in dribs and drabs with the bell constantly going and hsving to keep opening the security gates when you also have several escape artists and how upsetting it is for the children hsving their classmates arriving in an ad hoc manner
This probably means nothing to you but routine is essential for many disabled children and can help prevent meltdowns and challenging behaviour.

This makes a lot of sense to me.

To be honest if the parents are recieving carers allowance and high rate DLA then I think there is an argument about whether some of these children can be best cared for at least some if the time at home with specialist coming into the home to deliver specific sessions. I wouldn't be opposed to parents getting extra help financially to do this as it would save the state a fortune and ultimately even if a parent is working they will never be paying the amount of tax needed to fund a place at one of these specialist schools. We either pay a lot of staff to do this work which is hugely expensive or fund the parents to do it

I know some parents won't want to do this but I think as a society we do need to shift the burden of responsibility for the vulnerable back to the family unit as a first resort. ThIs is how it's been for millennia and ultimately is the most obvious choice as the family will be the most emotionally invested in the vulnerable person and will often be the best placed to understand and meet a family member's needs.

All children are entitled to a full time education its the LAW HTH.

In our situation the la have consistently broken the law. They issued the ehcp but have not put anything in place. This has gone on for over 5 years.
What has happened is multiple tribunals, that the la have spent ££££s on, and they have ignored every single ruling.
In the meantime the child has had no education or therapies for almost 10 years, and is now approaching adulthood, they've been set up to fail by our la

I agree that it does seem to be the safest way to drop off/pick ups with a large number of severely disabled children.

The thing is if you have a limited number of specialists. Let's say an OT. If they travel from house to house and there is a lot of dead time in there day. Wheras if you put the ot in one central place, they have less dead time but can also see more than one person at a time.

sometime you need a peer group to learn. My sons english lesson are run by a speech and language therapist and having age appropriate peers is necessary for the lesson to actually work. He doesnt have higher rate care so isnt in the group you suggest stay home, but some in his class do.

My godson is blind (higher rate dla in chikdhood) and there arent enough braille teachers around. He went to a special unit for the blind. All the equipment is in one place, all the teachers in the classes know what to do. He learned to use his brailler in a small group and did travel training. And had friends. They LA did have a roaming braille teacher but you get a teeny amount of sessions due to all the dead time. He is a higher rate tax payer at just 20 due to the education he got.