Rural Broadband

Debate between Ashley Fox and Sarah Dyke

Wednesday 13th November 2024 Westminster Hall

[Sarah Dyke]

I wholeheartedly agree, and will say more about the implications for rural businesses, farmers and vets.

Farmers rely on the internet for multiple purposes, such as sustainable farming incentive and other grant applications, animal monitoring and the security of their property. Vanessa, a farmer, told the engagement team that she could not connect her burglar alarm to her mobile as her broadband was too weak. That is very concerning for farms, especially in the south-west, where the cost of rural crime rose 41% last year, costing farmers £7 million, according to the National Farmers Union’s “Rural Crime Report”. Even if equipment is fitted with alarms, it takes the police time to respond due to the remote locations of farms and rural businesses, but reliable broadband and smart wi-fi products give farms proactive and reactive security.

[Sir Ashley Fox (Bridgwater) (Con)]

Does the hon. Lady agree that the Minister needs to find a suitable alternative for our constituents in Somerset, after the failure of Connecting Devon and Somerset and Airband?

[Sarah Dyke]

As I said, we must work harder to resolve some of the problems that CDS has left us in Devon and Somerset.

Farms are also hindered by poor mobile connectivity. An NFU survey revealed that only 21% of farmers had reliable mobile signal across their whole farm. That is especially important in farming, as it is Britain’s most dangerous industry and accounts for 20% of all deaths in the workplace. Farmers often work alone, so it is vital that they can contact help if there is an incident.

We must make progress on the shared rural network. Although the recent funding announcements are welcome there is still more progress to be made, especially in the very hard-to-connect areas that make up about 4% of Glastonbury and Somerton. I have spoken to Connecting Devon and Somerset, and the challenges to connecting those premises are clear. If there is physical infrastructure access, a build can cost £20 per metre, but without it prices can go up 10 times. If the landowner does not give permission, the costs rise even further. Project Gigabit has been targeting homes and businesses not included in broadband suppliers’ plans, and has helped to reach those hard-to-reach communities. It is important that we recognise the project’s successes, which I hope will continue, but we must not forget the final few per cent of people who will struggle to get good broadband coverage.

SEND Provision: Somerset

Debate between Ashley Fox and Sarah Dyke

Tuesday 3rd September 2024 Westminster Hall

[Sarah Dyke (Glastonbury and Somerton) (LD)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered SEND services in Somerset.

I do apologise for being late, Mr Efford. I am slightly out of breath, but it is an honour to serve under you in the Chair. Before I start, I draw my fellow Members’ attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests as a sitting Somerset councillor.

The current special educational needs and disabilities system is broken. Those with experience all report that it is far too adversarial, pitting families against councils and schools. The recent Isos Partnership report, produced in partnership with the County Councils Network and the Local Government Association, found that all stakeholders are acting reasonably, but are being failed by the system.

It is important to set out why the system is broken and the challenges that it faces. More children are being identified as having SEND—special educational needs and disabilities—than ever before. In January 2022, 14,000 children in Somerset were identified as having SEND; 4,000 of those children had education, health and care plans and the other 10,000 had some form of SEND support. Somerset is far from unique; SEND numbers have risen nationally. Since reforms to the system under the Children and Families Act 2014, the number of EHCPs has risen by 140%. More children have also had their needs left unmet in mainstream educational settings, a fact that places more emphasis on specialist schools.

Between 2014-15 and 2023-24, there has been a 60% increase in SEND placements in state-funded schools. Somerset Council officials have told me that the linchpin for the system failing has been the inability of mainstream education to cope with the sheer increase in demand within such a short time. The reality is that under the previous Conservative Government, schools and councils faced a huge real-terms cut in funding, which has undoubtedly had a negative impact on the provision that mainstream schools can provide.

The reliance on independent specialist schools has also increased pressure on councils. Somerset Council funding for children with EHCPs in mainstream settings is about £12 million a year and, despite having a quarter as many children in independent schools, the cost is more than double and, in addition, costs the council over £30 million per year. The difference in expenditure between children with EHCPs in independent schools and those in state-funded schools is vast. A typical child assessed as band 3 in a mainstream school will get £13,359 of total funding, whereas an independent school place can cost up to £100,000, plus £50,000 in transport costs. That is more than 10 times what a child with similar needs in a mainstream school is getting.

That brings me on to another element of failure. Even though the Government are investing more than ever in SEND provision, it is still significantly less than the actual spend by local authorities. Government funding in the high needs block allocation has risen from £4.8 billion in 2014-15 to £9.2 billion in 2024-25, but analysis has shown that the actual figure for high needs spending by local authorities is £890 million more in 2023-24 and could rise to more than £1 billion over the next two years. Somerset Council’s high needs forecast was evaluated by Newton Europe, which concluded that by 2027-28 the council would be carrying a formal deficit of £160 million. The statutory override on the debts means that they are kept off the books, but half of council leaders surveyed recently said that they would be insolvent in three years if that was removed.

The funding is also unequal across the country, leading to a postcode lottery in provision. Somerset Council is part of the f40 group, which includes the poorest funded councils in the country. Somerset will receive less than £8,000 gross dedicated grant funding per mainstream pupil in 2024-25—more than £5,000 less than the best-funded local authority in England, illustrating a massive disparity.

Rural areas such as Somerset also face huge costs in home to school transport due to the sheer size of the county. The average cost to Somerset Council of transport for a child with SEND is £10,000 per year, while some individual transport arrangements cost the council over £60,000 a year. Despite that investment and support, the outcomes for children with SEND have failed to improve over the last decade since the reforms in 2014.

I am inundated with casework from desperate parents who are at breaking point over their child’s being unable to receive the education they deserve. One parent from Wincanton told me that their bright, intelligent child deserves to be cared for rather than ignored by the system following what was a harrowing experience. Even though their child has gone through the SEND system and has a placement in a specialist school, their needs are still not being met properly. To summarise, there is more demand than ever before and the system is costing more than ever before, but it is failing to deliver for some of the country’s most vulnerable children.

I turn my attention now to a consequence of the failure of SEND services in Somerset. About 2,000 children in Somerset receive a home education. Although the council believes some of the children are receiving a home education for an entirely legitimate reason, many are being forced into home schooling as the child could not cope in school. Issues arising from a forced home education are twofold.

When a child moves to receive education at a place other than a school, they are automatically deleted from the school roll, resulting in the council’s being unable to receive the dedicated grant funding for that child. Somerset Council estimates that that is costing the education system between £8 million and £10 million a year. It is almost impossible to retrieve that money to create space for the child in the system once they are off-rolled. That then creates a one-way exit from the system unless an EHCP is granted for the child at some point in the future. In any case, it would be a very slow and arduous process, because we know that nearly half of EHCPs take longer than the 20-week statutory period to be granted.

The tribunal system is far too traumatic and stressful for parents. While 98% of tribunal cases find in the parents’ favour, that does not change the reality that councils are struggling to provide sufficient and appropriate services. For parents who do not know how to navigate the tribunal process, it can be even more turbulent for them and their child. Somerset is struggling with the issue more than many other places across the country.

Somerset has the third-highest rate of school exclusions and the second highest rate of suspensions in England for children with SEND. Those exclusions and suspensions are primarily for persistent disruptive behaviour. Even where a child has not been identified with SEND, it has often subsequently been discovered that there is an undiagnosed need. That leaves them excluded from the system and fighting for a diagnosis and an EHCP in order to get back to school, where they should be, and receive the education that they deserve.

It is not surprising to learn that there is also a detrimental impact on parents. There are around 60,000 economically inactive adults in Somerset, and the council has reason to believe that at least some of those people have been forced to give up work because they care for their child at home. We can often forget the important childcare aspect of education. The impact of a breakdown in a child’s education can have a wide range of consequences; sadly, in some cases, it can lead to a family breakdown. We need to undertake work on a national level to get to grips with the scale of the problem. I know the Government are proposing a register of children not in school, to understand the issues better, but we still need to create better routes to get children back into school.

Somerset council is supporting efforts to bring in a more flexible education system that would work to support children at home and to rebuild their ability to enter the system, but they need national support.

[Sir Ashley Fox (Bridgwater) (Con)]

I thank the hon. Lady for bringing the debate to Westminster Hall. I have only been the Member for Bridgwater for two months and already have many letters from parents concerned about the system in Somerset for SEND. It is clear that the system is too adversarial and not working correctly. I support her plea for Somerset to be more generously funded—not more than others, but brought up to the average of the country.

[Sir Ashley Fox]

Does the hon. Lady agree that the most pressing problem is delays in the system, particularly in making decisions, in creating an EHC plan and in assessing what the contents of that plan would be?

[Sarah Dyke]

The hon. Gentleman is correct. We know that, as I have already said, there are significant delays in children receiving their EHCP, so I call on the Government to speed up that process. As I have said, the most important thing is for our children to receive the education they deserve. We need to get them in school, where they should be, to have the best possible education.

Somerset council’s flexible approach involves taking more compassionate actions to put children’s needs at the forefront and to support them in their journey back into mainstream education. The Liberal Democrats want to support that work by creating a national body for SEND that would fund support for those with the very highest needs. A national body would support services to identify where early interventions are needed. That would lower future costs, since needs are so often exacerbated due to inaction.

We must look at other solutions and reforms that could make the system more efficient. Somerset council is utilising the funding it has and equalising funding between mainstream and specialist schools, but currently mainstream schools get a third less money than specialist schools. Somerset council believes that by spending the money in a smarter way, it can improve mainstream provision and create better opportunities for children. The new Government have pledged to take a community approach to SEND, and I await further details of what that will look like.

Aside from the children’s wellbeing Bill, there was little mention of SEND in the King’s Speech. The Government pledged to put children at the heart of education and children’s services with that Bill, but to make real change we must put early interventions in place and create support within the mainstream system to reduce costs and the demand for specialist schools.

Part of the solution is to give local authorities with responsibility for education the powers and resources to act as strategic education authorities for their area, including responsibility for places planning, exclusions, administering admissions and SEND functions. The importance of those issues cannot be overstated as evidenced by the three debates on SEND happening in this place this week alone.

I have spoken about issues specific to Somerset, but the crisis affects children and families across the country. We simply cannot let it go on any longer. Delays in action and reform will cost those within the SEND system and will increase the cost to the public purse, as the finances needed to fix the system just carry on increasing over time. I would like to hear more details from the Minister on how the Government will resolve the issues embedded in the system and support the nation’s children to secure the education that they deserve.