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20
Nov 2023
North Yorkshire's special needs black hole could soar to £100m
North Yorkshire Council has revealed it is facing an annual black hole of up to £100m over its spending on special educational needs and disability (SEND) children in as little as four years due to spiralling demand for support services.
While the council says the projected financial pressure was triggered by legislation in 2014, it says a simultaneous increase in complex needs has seen SEND children each cost up to £1.5m a year to support.
In addition, sources say while covid will have had an impact, it is difficult to pinpoint why North Yorkshire is seeing such an explosion in numbers of SEND children, for which the council already has a £13m annual deficit.
Some point to the Children and Families Act 2014, which allows young people and their families to request local authorities to carry out an assessment and provide support, including allocated funding, for each child or young person who applies.
While declining to go on the record, some politicians at County Hall have suggested the relatively large proportion of middle class parents in the county is partly behind the council’s plight, with a common view that getting a SEND statement for a child brings financial and other benefits.
North Yorkshire is in the bottom quartile of funding per head of population for SEND children nationally, partly because the government funding formula is weighted towards areas of high deprivation.
However, some politicians believe areas with more middle class people able to articulate arguments for their children end up with significant SEND demand.
Parents are believed to have had an almost perfect success rate in getting children, some of whom have “mild” or “borderline” issues, classed as having special needs after appealing the council’s decisions.
One source stated:
The financial alert, issued at a full meeting of the authority this week, came days after the authority’s chief finance officer gave evidence to the House of Commons Levelling Up, Housing and Communities select committee the authority was facing “a perfect storm” financially.
Gary Fielding, the authority’s corporate director resources, told the committee even well-run councils were now facing “existential challenges”.
He added the council was looking at using savings of between £30m and £70k generated by merging the county’s eight district, borough and county councils into a unitary authority, “cashing in the dividend that has been delivered by unitarisation” to balance the books.
Mr Fielding said:
Read more:
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- Harrogate parents join special needs education protest
Mr Fielding said while the funding for many SEND services came from a ring fenced Department for Education grant, the increase in demand was draining the council’s general budget, for example with the SEND home to school transport cost soaring from £5m annually to £21m in just five years.
He added the council would be reviewing policy areas as a contingency if the unitarisation savings plan did not work.
The full council meeting had heard residents were questioning when the authority would “reap the benefits of the millions saved by becoming a unitary authority”, a leading argument behind the controversial reorganisation of local government in North Yorkshire.
After outlining “benefits” such as devolution and savings on senior officers’ salaries the authority’s executive member for finance, Cllr Gareth Dadd, said the savings would “help mitigate some of those challenges that we are facing”.
He said:
After the meeting Cllr Dadd added:
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