How we will fund the strategy
At present, all local authorities annually receive capital funding from central government to address sufficiency needs for children and young people with SEND.
The Education Act 1996 sets out a statutory duty on local authorities to secure sufficient school places, which they must do with regard to securing special educational provision for pupils with SEND as well as those requiring AP.
The Children and Families Act 2014 also places important statutory responsibilities on local authorities for supporting children and young people with SEND, including keeping the sufficiency of educational provision for them under review.
This funding is not ring-fenced and can be used in a variety of ways to create additional SEND and AP capacity across both mainstream and special schools.
The council proposes to use this funding to implement the better belonging sufficiency strategy, as is its intended purpose.
The investment of this annual allocation builds on the strong capital investment into the specialist sector which has enabled us to increase capacity in this sector by 527 places over the last 5 years.
It is our intention to ensure the high needs capital allocation is targeted appropriately to ensure sufficiency is being created in the right areas and in the right type of provision.
Any decisions we make regarding SEND and AP sufficiency and place planning are based on robust and up to date data, regularly reviewed by the SEND and AP local area partnership.
By utilising high needs capital allocation to provide additional capacity it is anticipated that this will mitigate the unsustainable costs to the SEND budget