Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, pursuant to the Answer of 26 November 2024 to Question 14758 on Special Educational Needs: Finance, and with reference to Table 5.1 in the Autumn Budget 2024, HC 295, on what evidential basis item 62, page 121, entitled Special Education Needs and Disabilities: Reduction in Local Authority SEND deficits as a result of additional DEL funding specifies £865 million of spending in 2025-26.

The Office for Budget Responsibility had forecast that local authorities would spend £1.4 billion more than the funding they would receive on high needs in the 2025/26 financial year. This was on the assumption that high needs funding would increase only by the gross domestic product (GDP) deflator. In fact, overall high needs funding increased by £1 billion, and given this higher level of funding, HM Treasury have recorded in their tables that this creates a corresponding £865 million reduction in expected local government spending on high needs (that is, in the level of local government spending over the funding they will receive).