SEND Provision: Rural Communities

Anna Gelderd Excerpts

Tuesday 27th October 2026 Westminster Hall

[Georgia Gould]

We absolutely recognise the importance of assistive technology in the system. The hon. Member has raised and championed that, and I will follow up and give him a proper update on how it is going and our plans.

My next point is about the importance of partnership. My hon. Friend the Member for South West Norfolk talked about how parents have to navigate myriad different services and are bouncing between them. One key thing we want to deliver in the immediate term is asking local areas to strengthen their partnership arrangements across health, education and local authorities but critically also with parents and young people. In the long term we aim to have much stronger partnership arrangements in place so that whichever stage a child is at, whether they need early intervention or more specialist support, that comes in a timely manner and without a fight.

[Anna Gelderd (South East Cornwall) (Lab)]

In my rural community of South East Cornwall, I had the honour of visiting the Learning Paddocks, which is a specialist provision that worked very hard to get set up but faced many barriers to being a specialist provider of care. In areas such as mine with huge transport problems and when mainstream education is not the right choice, how are the Government going to work with providers to support specialist provision such as the Learning Paddocks?

[Georgia Gould]

We have an expert panel that is developing a set of specialist provision packages, which will set out what we expect from settings to meet a whole range of needs that will be consulted on. The expectation is that local authorities will need to commission against all of those specialist provision packages so the full range of need should be met within a local area. That will make it much easier for providers and local authorities to understand what is expected of them and to provide those packages. Critically, when a child requires that support, they will not have to wait for it because it is commissioned and available in that area. At the moment, there is a huge postcode lottery with some support available in some areas while in others it is completely absent—that is why we see some of the long distances that we have heard about.