Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment her Department has made of the potential impact of the Safety Valve agreement on the provision of special educational needs support in Surrey.

The department is continuing to work with Surrey to deliver their safety valve plan, including providing ongoing support from both expert advisers. We regularly review the implementation of all safety valve agreements through our monitoring process, which takes place 3 times a year. Safety valve agreements were only made if both the local authority and the department’s expert special educational needs and disabilities advisers agreed that the proposals would give children and young people a better service and comply with the local authority’s statutory obligations.