Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether she has made an assessment of the impact of changes in the levels of local authority section 114 notices on the (a) adequacy, (b) resilience and (c) robustness of the market for alternative provision for children with SEND (i) in affected local authority areas and (ii) elsewhere.

Councils are responsible for their own finances and the decision to issue a Section 114 notice is one taken locally. Whilst the department has not made a formal assessment of the impact of Section 114 notices on the Alternative Provision (AP) market, where a notice is issued, Departmental officials work alongside colleagues from Department of Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, and will monitor the situation closely to ensure that statutory and key services to children and vulnerable people are not affected because of these controls.

The published Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) and AP Improvement Plan sets out the department’s plans to improve the experience and outcomes for children and young people with SEND and those who need AP, within a fair and financially sustainable system. The Improvement Plan outlines our approach to building capacity to achieve the behaviours and culture required for the successful implementation of these policy reforms, and can be found at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/send-and-alternative-provision-improvement-plan.