Asked by: Cameron Thomas (Liberal Democrat - Tewkesbury)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to help reduce the backlog of Education, Health and Care Plans in (a) Gloucestershire and (b) England.
Answered by Catherine McKinnell - Minister of State (Education)
The department wants to ensure that, where required, education, health and care (EHC) plan assessments are progressed promptly and, if needed, plans are issued as quickly as possible so that children and young people can access the support they need.
Local authorities have a statutory responsibility to assess whether children and young people have special educational needs that require an EHC plan. EHC plans must be issued within twenty weeks of the needs assessment commencing so that children and young people can access the support they need. In 2023, there were 138,200 initial requests for an EHC plan and 90,500 assessments took place. 50.3% of new EHC plans in 2023 were issued within twenty weeks.
The department knows that local authorities have seen an increase in the number of assessment requests and that more needs to be done to ensure that local areas deliver effective and timely services. This includes better communication with schools and families.
The department continues to monitor and work closely with local authorities that have issues with EHC plan timeliness. Where there are concerns about a local authority’s capacity to make the required improvements, we help the local authority to identify the barriers and put in place an effective recovery plan. This includes, where needed, securing specialist special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) adviser support to help identify the barriers to EHC plan process timeliness and put in place practical plans for recovery.
A Joint Area SEND inspection was carried out by Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission between 11 to 15 December 2023 in Gloucestershire. Inspectors concluded the local area partnership’s arrangements led to inconsistent experiences and outcomes for children and young people and identified a number of recommendations including increasing timeliness and quality of EHC plans. Leaders in the local area have provided an improvement plan and an updated SEND strategic plan.
Officials and SEND advisors from both the department and NHS England meet regularly with Gloucestershire local area leaders from the local authority and integrated care board, parent representatives, education leaders and other partners to monitor progress against their improvement plan. As part of this work, there is also ongoing monitoring of Gloucestershire’s EHC plans, on their timeliness, quality and clearance of any backlog.
To assist the local area, the department has deployed a SEND advisor to offer support and advice. Some of the advisor’s work to date includes analysis of EHC plans data and trends, facilitation of best practice exchange from other regions, advice and guidance to enhance the quality of EHC plans.
Asked by: Cameron Thomas (Liberal Democrat - Tewkesbury)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if her Department will take steps to ensure that additional funding for Special Educational Needs and Disabilities in mainstream schools is equitably distributed in rural areas.
Answered by Catherine McKinnell - Minister of State (Education)
Local authorities are responsible for allocating additional funding from their high needs budgets to mainstream schools for their pupils with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND). The department is providing an increase of almost £1 billion for high needs budgets in the 2025/26 financial year, bringing total high needs funding for children and young people with complex SEND to £11.9 billion. Of that total, Gloucestershire County Council is being allocated a provisional funding amount of over £104.8 million in the 2025/26 financial year through the high needs national funding formula (NFF), which is an 8.3% increase per head of their 2 to 18 year old population, on their equivalent 2024/25 financial year NFF allocation.
Asked by: Cameron Thomas (Liberal Democrat - Tewkesbury)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, whether her Department has made an assessment of the potential impact of proposed changes to inheritance tax on (a) small family farm closures and (b) internal food production security.
Answered by James Murray - Exchequer Secretary (HM Treasury)
The Government published information about the reforms to agricultural property relief and business property relief at www.gov.uk/government/publications/agricultural-property-relief-and-business-property-relief-reforms.
It is expected that up to around 2,000 estates will be affected by the changes to APR and BPR in 2026-27, with around half of those being claims that involve AIM shares. Almost three-quarters of estates claiming agricultural property relief (including those claiming agricultural property relief and business property relief together) are expected to be unaffected by these reforms.
The UK has robust domestic food production, and these reforms will only affect a small number of estates. The small number of landowners affected will not necessarily need to sell the land and, if they choose to, then it does not necessarily mean the land would stop being used for food production. At Autumn Budget 2024, the Government announced the largest ever investment in sustainable food production in England.
In accordance with standard practice, a tax information and impact note will be published alongside the draft legislation before the relevant Finance Bill.