12th February 2026 • My Family Our Needs

The UK government has announced plans to step in and help local councils with the huge debts they have built up from providing support for children with SEND.

Under the government’s latest plan, around £5 billion of SEND-related debt will be covered centrally, with the aim of paying off about 90% of the deficits councils have accrued up to now. This means local authorities will have much less of the historic financial burden to manage themselves.

It comes days after the Local Government Association (LGA) warned that eight in 10 English councils would face bankruptcy, if they had to honour SEND deficits built up in recent years.

The government is expected to lay out their full plans for SEND reform in the Schools White Paper in the coming weeks.

Local authorities are legally required to identify and provide support for children with SEND. However, increasing demand has led many councils to spend significantly more on SEND services than the funding they receive from the government.

At present, these SEND budget shortfalls are artificially kept off council books through a statutory override, which is set to end in 2028. The government then intends to assume responsibility for SEND funding.

Projections from the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), which assesses government spending, warned the combined cost of historic council deficits on SEND could reach £14bn by then.

From this autumn, councils in England will now receive a grant, external paying off 90% of any deficits that they had built up to the end of this financial year.

It applies to funds in the high needs block of the dedicated schools grant, which comes from the government and is used to pay for SEND support.

Cllr Louise Gittins, chair of the LGA, welcomed the plans, calling it a ‘recognition that these costs are not of councils’ making and have accrued due to a broken system that is urgently in need of reform’.

She added that fully writing off the historic and future deficits ‘remains critical’.

‘Councils continue to work hard to use their finite resources in the best way possible to ensure the best outcomes for children and to meet their legal duties to support children and young people with SEND. It is important the Schools White Paper delivers the much-needed reform of the SEND system, leading to better outcomes for children and families, both now and in the future, and that is financially sustainable for councils’.

‘It is crucial that government works with councils on reform of key services, including SEND and adult social care’.

1.7 million pupils in England currently receive some support for SEND in school, and the number of those receiving the higher level of support through EHCPs has more than doubled in a decade.

The government has also faced calls from MPs to put more money into mainstream school budgets. To support their plans to overhaul the SEND system. It has previously announced a £3 billion investment towards creating 50,000 specialist school places within mainstream school.

The Department for Education said ‘to deliver lasting change for families, our reforms must be built on strong foundations and that’s why we are working in partnership with councils’.

‘Our Schools White Paper will set out our full plans to bring forward an inclusive education system that enables all children to achieve and thrive, while ensuring financial sustainability for councils.’

The government has said it will set out further details on how it plans to deal with any deficits built up from April 2026 to April 2028, when the statutory override is due to expire, in the upcoming Schools White Paper.

Families will be watching closely to see whether these changes improve experiences for children and young people needing tailored educational support.

In other news, fostering rules will be relaxed to help create 10,000 new places for vulnerable children in England by allowing younger and more diverse households to become foster carers.