Would you believe me if I told you that the last government blackmailed local authorities into denying the legal rights of disabled children? Sadly, starting in 2021, the Department for Education set up a scheme which did exactly that - there’s a good chance it’s happening in your area, and you may have never heard of it.

More than half of local authorities in England have such huge debts in their SEND spending that they face what is essentially bankruptcy in March 2026. Those debts are currently “off the books”, but they will become due next year, unless the government takes action.

Local authorities are required by law to provide the right support to children whose needs are significant enough to be eligible for a statutory plan, called an EHCP. But councils have not been receiving enough funding to meet their legal duties, and the need for plans has grown significantly - thanks to spending cuts, there’s less support available without a statutory plan, so the debts have grown swiftly in many areas.

The Department for Education set up a scheme, known as Safety Valve, targeting the local authorities with the biggest SEND debts. 38 local authorities, desperate for a solution, signed up. The agreements set targets for significantly cutting spending on children with SEND, despite the fact that SEND services were already failing children. The local authorities that meet their targets get annual payouts - not towards their debts, but towards the huge amounts they “overspend” each year. In other words, if they make big enough cuts to their spending, the government will generously give them some of the money they needed in the first place, but they’ll still have so much debt they may need to go bankrupt in March 2026. These debts total around £3bn across England.

In order to meet the targets of these agreements, some local authorities shared details of their plans - my local authority Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole published their proposal online following a legal letter, and it involved impossible cuts, like heavily reducing the number of EHCPs they issued, placing more disabled children into mainstream regardless of needs, supporting fewer children, and ending support earlier.

These debts affect all children and all schools in the affected areas - it’s not just disabled children who are affected. Many local authorities are having to divert money away from mainstream school budgets as part of their agreements, at the same time as schools are being asked to support more disabled children. It’s obvious that this is a recipe for disaster for our schools, who are already struggling so much.

Safety Valve agreements don’t actually address the debts, so they wouldn’t have saved any local authorities from bankruptcy. Failing vulnerable children for no benefit doesn’t sound like a great deal to us, but 38 local authorities went for it, fearing that the government wouldn’t help with these debts if they didn’t. At least five local authorities have had their agreements suspended because they could not meet the impossible targets, and there’s news of other recent agreements already being off track. When targets aren’t met, the government is off the hook for the annual payouts, so they won’t be too worried about that. But we are.

Last year, I wrote a blog called Why you need to know about the Safety Valve scheme - if you’re not familiar with it, it’s a good place to start. More recently, I wrote an article for Special Needs Jungle on the new campaign.

Many parents and teachers haven’t heard of it, even if there’s an agreement in their area, because these arrangements were usually made with no consultation or scrutiny. Two of the most recent agreements - Bristol and Devon - are the subject of judicial review because of this lack of consultation, and the impact this will have on disabled children. We are waiting for the decision to be released.

Last year there was an increasing amount of campaigning, press coverage and increased awareness of the scheme. I set up a parliamentary petition to suspend the scheme - sadly it was closed early due to the general election but an updated petition is online now.

In late 2024, it was quietly announced that there would be no new safety valve agreements. That’s obviously good news, but it doesn’t go far enough. There remains so much uncertainty, so these debts and targets are affecting the decisions being made by local authorities about our disabled children on a daily basis.

Our new parliamentary petition asks the government to end all existing Safety Valve agreements and clear the debts that should never have existed, which local authorities cannot afford to pay. We can’t allow decisions being made about our vulnerable children to be based on targets for cuts. These agreements and debts directly interfere with local authorities meeting their legal duties to disabled children - this is a scandal, and it needs to be fixed urgently.

Please sign the petition here - if you want to take part in future action, join us in the Stop Safety Valve Action group on Facebook.