I’ve spent most of this year campaigning against cuts to SEND services and the dire state of funding for SEND and for schools. The campaign is now a national one, and we need your support to raise awareness of the realities of this broken system.

The focus of the campaign currently is the Safety Valve scheme, a Department for Education initiative which incentivises local authorities to cut spending and therefore services for disabled children. 38 local authorities are already signed up, and these deals have been done covertly so there has been very little concrete information about the severity of these plans until recent months. You can learn more about the Safety Valve scheme here.

These agreements are inevitably having a profoundly negative impact on pupils, families and schools. Parents are pursuing three judicial review cases, two against Devon and one against Bristol. Despairing multi academy trusts in Norfolk went public when their top-up funding was cut significantly in order for the council to meet DfE’s impossible demands. They state this will mean mass redundancies and a spike in exclusions of disabled children, who are already disproportionately more likely to be excluded. Research by IPSEA found that many of these agreements make it impossible for local MPs to meet their statutory duties, and in some cases such as Cambridge, their documents make it clear that they have targets to assess and support fewer children. Kent are implementing new ways to subvert the law through the implementation of a locality model, and a new “continuum of needs” that intends to place all disabled children in mainstream unless they have the most severe or complex needs, and as yet this is not defined.

Many MPs will have no knowledge of what we are all experiencing, and our voices have power to inform and make change.

I’m co-ordinating efforts with parents, carers, school staff, councillors and others to inform and raise awareness with local MPs of the severity of the SEND issues affecting their community. A template letter has been drafted, with the opportunity for local experts to tailor the letter with information on their unique challenges.

Our aim is to send one letter jointly to every MP in every local authority area affected by Safety Valve, then on to those involved in the Delivering Better Value and SEND Change programmes. With so many new MPs, it’s crucial they understand the picture across their local authority, not just hear isolated cases

The template letter sets out the current dire state of SEND services, the funding crisis, and the damaging schemes implemented by the last government. We are asking MPs to meet collectively with parents from their area. We believe that one co-ordinated letter with signatures from across the local authority will have a greater impact and demonstrate the extent of the problem.

In order to do this, we need your help. We will need at least one signature from each constituency in every local authority affected, although preferably we will have many more. We need local experts who can shape the letters and co-ordinate meetings where MPs respond.

This project is a huge undertaking, but together we can make sure that every MP in an affected area is briefed, and understands the pressing need to resolve the deficits, stop Safety Valve and improve funding and provision for our disabled children. They cannot advocate for us without this knowledge.

Below is the letter that has already been sent to the MPs within Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole. The letter tailored for your area will be similar but with different specifics.

If you would like to be involved in this project, you can join our Stop Safety Valve action group on Facebook. If you would just like to sign the letter when it’s ready, you can do so here or use the form at the bottom of this page beneath the letter.

Together we can have an impact across the country - please join to help us make this a reality.

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Dear Mr. Duncan-Jordan, Ms. Toale, Mr. Hayes, Ms. Slade and Sir Chope,

Congratulations on your success in the general election. We are sure that many local and national issues are competing for your attention. However, we are writing to make you aware of a crisis that has profound implications for Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole, the economy, parents, children and schools, and particularly for children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND).

You are no doubt aware that Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole has a substantial deficit due to the gap between central government funding for SEND provision, and the cost of meeting their legislative and statutory duties towards disabled children. This funding gap has led to deficits of almost £1bn across England alone. Many local authorities, including BCP, are technically insolvent as a result, and more than half are likely to need to file a section 114 notice (essentially bankruptcy) during this parliament.

Rather than providing sufficient funding for statutory SEND provision and investing in non-statutory support, the previous government established several programmes which aim to “suppress demand” for statutory support and, eventually, to make legislative change that would weaken the legal rights of disabled children to an accessible education. What this means in practice is that many disabled children are being failed deliberately, sanctioned by the previous government, with no repercussions or accountability. The effects on these children and families cannot be overstated.

BCP is part of the Delivering Better Value scheme, which you can learn more about here. We were also close to joining the Safety Valve scheme, and there are currently 38 such agreements in place. Safety Valve agreements financially incentivise local authorities to fail disabled children on an unprecedented scale. Under these agreements, local authorities are forced to cut their spending on SEND provision to meet strict financial targets and other key performance indicators, such as reducing the number of children who receive support or ending their support early. Such spending cuts and targets can only be achieved by failing to meet their statutory duties. If targets are met, the local authority gets relatively small contributions, towards their annual overspend rather than for investment into much-needed services.

Several local authorities have failed to meet the targets (Bath and North East Somerset, Cambridgeshire, Dorset, Hillingdon and Norfolk) in their agreements because they are simply not achievable. This has led to agreements being suspended or extended, with some local authorities being placed in an “enhanced monitoring scheme” (Cambridgeshire and Norfolk) that requires further cuts to get back on track.

The details of the agreements are mostly exempt from public scrutiny. The charity IPSEA carried out an investigation and found many included plans that disregard the law and that will cause long term damage to vulnerable children, as well as increased cost to public services in the longer term.

The negative impacts of this scheme are already beginning to show. One of the first local authorities to sign up, Bury, has had a scathing Area SEND inspection from Ofsted which condemns “widespread failings”. Academy trusts in Norfolk will be forced to make redundancies on a massive scale, mostly of vital teaching assistants, as their promised top-up funding has been cut by up to half as a direct result of Norfolk’s failure to meet their Safety Valve targets. They state this will inevitably mean mass exclusions for disabled children as they cannot even keep them safe.

The extent of unlawful behaviour within local authority SEND departments is staggering. Local authorities already lose 98% of appeals to the SENDIST tribunal because unlawful decision making is the norm. Parents are already waiting around a year for a hearing date due to pressure on the service, and the unlawful decision making happening under Safety Valve agreements will only exacerbate those delays.

You may be aware that there are currently three judicial review cases pending, brought by parents against local authorities who have entered into Safety Valve agreements, as they have failed to follow proper procedure or pay due regard to their public sector equality duties.

Earlier this year, we arranged a petition against the Safety Valve scheme in BCP, which led to a motion which was unanimously carried, to ensure any Safety Valve agreement was taken before the council. Shortly after this, BCP’s Safety Valve application was refused by the Department for Education, but we have been told that discussions are still ongoing.

However, what we are hearing from families is that the plans made as part of the Safety Valve proposal in BCP are being carried out anyway. We are hearing of many more children refused assessments, many plans being issued without a school named and parents stalled until their appeal window has closed. These are cases where the local authority, who spend significant amounts of public money on external legal representation, could not win but parents are forced through this process anyway.

Ceasing the schemes themselves is not sufficient, but ending them would make it clear that this government is serious about resolving the growing crisis in SEND. It is vital that the government not only ends these schemes and funds services sufficiently, but that they implement accountability to prevent local authorities from routinely disregarding the law.

We are part of a national group campaigning against the Safety Valve scheme and cuts to SEND services more broadly. We are aware that this is a complex issue and that you may not be familiar with the details.

We would therefore like to invite you to meet with us to discuss this matter urgently. We believe that this issue requires members of parliament within a local authority to work closely together regardless of party affiliation.

I am aware some of you have had contact from local parents on this issue. I have already met with or spoken to a few of you, and one has already reached out to request a meeting with local parents. I have proposed that we do this jointly with all willing members of parliament within Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole. This will ensure that everyone is working from the same information.

If we cannot find a suitable time, we can arrange separate meetings.

Thank you for your time, and I hope you are able to meet with us at your earliest convenience.

Yours sincerely
Rachel Filmer, BCP Alliance for Children & Schools