Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what recent assessment she has made of the adequacy of the number of SEND places in mainstream schools in (a) Edmonton, (b) Enfield and (c) London.

The statutory duty to provide sufficient school places, including places for pupils with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), sits with local authorities.

To support local authorities in fulfilling their statutory duties, the department is investing £2.6 billion between 2022 and 2025 to help deliver new places and improve existing provision for children and young people with SEND, or who require alternative provision. This represents a significant, transformational investment in new high needs provision. It will support local authorities to deliver new places in mainstream and special schools, as well as other specialist settings, and will also be used to improve the suitability and accessibility of existing buildings.

As part of this commitment, in March 2022 the department announced High Needs Provision Capital Allocations amounting to over £1.4 billion of new investment, focused on academic years 2023/24 and 2024/25. The borough of Enfield received a total of just over £6.1 million through the allocations announced in March 2022, and over £1.3 million through previous allocations announced in April 2021 (to deliver new places for the 2022/23 academic year). As funding is allocated at a local authority level, the department cannot provide data on funding for the Edmonton constituency.

Local authorities within both inner and outer London collectively received a total of just under £305.6 million through the allocations announced in March 2022. Prior to that, the regions received a combined total of just under £75.9 million through the funding announced in April 2021.

Local authorities can use this funding to work with any school or institution in their area, including mainstream and special schools. It is ultimately up to local authorities to determine how to best prioritise their funding to address their local priorities.

From Summer 2023, the department will be collecting data from local authorities on the physical capacity of special schools and special educational needs units/resourced provision in mainstream schools, as well as corresponding forecasts of demand for specialist places. We expect this to be an annual data collection, forming part of the existing School Capacity Survey.