Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many and which local areas have been required to produce a written statement of action after a local area SEND inspection in each year since 2016; which of those areas have been re-visited by (a) Ofsted and (b) Care Quality Commission inspectors; and what the outcome was for each such area.

From May 2016, Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission (CQC) began inspecting local areas on their effectiveness in fulfilling their new duties for children and young people who have special educational needs or a disability (SEND). All 151 local areas in England will be inspected over a period of 5 years.

The purpose of the inspections is to provide reassurance to families that local areas are being held to account and to support local areas to improve their services and deliver better outcomes for children and young people. They also provide evidence for local areas to receive appropriate external support and intervention.

Following the inspection, local areas are not graded, but are given a narrative evaluation report that highlights areas of strength and areas where improvements need to be made. Where there are significant weaknesses, the local area will be required to produce and publish a Written Statement of Action (WSoA).

Ofsted and CQC are revisiting those local areas with a WSoA to assess the progress made against each of the actions in the WSoA since the original inspection. Local areas are usually revisited within 18 months of their WSoA having been accepted as fit for purpose by Ofsted and CQC.

Where a local area is considered to have made sufficient progress against its WSoA, monitoring visits from the Department for Education and NHS England will cease.

As of 13 April 2021, 117 local areas have been inspected and their reports published under the Ofsted and CQC SEND inspection framework. Of these, 60 local areas have been asked to produce a WSoA. Out of the 22 local areas revisited to assess progress made against each of the actions in the WSoA since the original inspection, 9 have made sufficient progress against all their significant areas of concern. There are currently 34 outstanding local authority SEND inspections and Ofsted/CQC plan to restart full area SEND inspections from June 2021 at the earliest. Inspections will be of areas that have not yet been inspected under the current framework. There are 38 outstanding Revisits. Ofsted and CQC will start revisiting areas where they had significant concerns about SEND provision from April 2021.

Where sufficient progress has not been made against all areas of the WSoA following a revisit, the Department for Education, Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) and NHS England will determine the next steps on a case-by-case basis. This could include my right hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Education, using powers of intervention. As a minimum, local area leaders will be required to submit an action plan, co-produced with partners, showing how the local area will report on progress and impact, and how partners (including families) will be kept fully informed of progress. A formal joint Department for Education and NHS England progress review meeting will be held with the local area within 6 months of the revisit report. The department’s SEND advisers and NHS England leads continue to work closely with local authority and health services to support them in making the necessary improvements to services.

The local areas asked to produce a WSoA following a local area SEND inspection are listed here:

• Bedford Borough
• Birmingham
• Brent
• Bristol
• Bury
• Central Bedfordshire
• Cheshire East
• Cumbria
• Derby City
• Devon
• Dorset
• Dudley
• Durham
• Essex
• Hartlepool
• Hull, Kingston upon
• Kent
• Kingston upon Thames
• Lancashire
• Leicester City
• Leicestershire
• Liverpool
• Luton
• Medway
• Merton
• Middlesbrough
• Newcastle upon Tyne
• Norfolk
• North East Lincolnshire
• North Somerset
• Northumberland
• Oldham
• Oxfordshire
• Peterborough
• Redcar and Cleveland
• Rochdale
• Sandwell
• Sefton
• Sheffield
• Shropshire
• Somerset
• South Gloucestershire
• South Tyneside
• Southend-on-Sea
• Staffordshire
• Stockport
• Stockton-On-Tees
• Suffolk
• Surrey
• Sutton
• Swindon
• Thurrock
• Wakefield
• Walsall
• Waltham Forest
• Wandsworth
• Windsor and Maidenhead
• Wokingham
• Worcestershire
• York

The table below indicates the outcome of local areas revisited by Ofsted/CQC.

During the COVID-19 outbreak, inspections were suspended, however it is vital that these children and young people, whose wellbeing and care may have also been significantly affected by the disruption to services caused by the outbreak, continue to receive support. Therefore, I commissioned CQC and Ofsted to work collaboratively with local areas through a series of interim visits, which began in October 2020 and finished in March 2021. These visits gave an insight into how well the system is working, support local areas to meet the needs of children and young people at this difficult time, and allowed Ofsted to share good practice.

CQC and Ofsted have been commissioned by the Department for Education, with the support of DHSC, to develop a new area SEND inspection framework to launch after the existing inspection cycle has finished. Learning from the published assessment of the current approach, this will include a greater focus on the experience of children and young people with SEND, and their families, and give more prominence to the quality integration and commissioning of education, health and care services. The new framework will take into account the COVID-19 outbreak’s impact on services and on children, young people and families.