Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether local area SEND accelerated progress plans are publicly available documents; and if he will make a statement.

Under the local area special educational and disability (SEND) inspection framework, all local authorities in England are required by the Department for Education to produce an action plan (often referred to as an Accelerated Progress Plan or APP) if inspectors have found that insufficient progress has been made against their Written Statement of Action.

The local authorities that have been required to produce an APP are the following: Bury, Dorset, Hartlepool, Kingston upon Hull, Lancashire, Medway, Oldham, Oxfordshire, Sefton, South Gloucestershire, Suffolk, Surrey, and Windsor and Maidenhead.

Local authorities are required by the department to publish their action plans locally (for example, on the local authority website), so that parents, carers, children and young people can understand the actions that they are taking to address concerns raised during SEND inspections. A formal progress review meeting will take place within at least 6 months of the revisit report being published. The key partners involved, including the Parent Carer Forum, will be invited to attend. Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission will not revisit unless directed by my right hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Education.