Agenda item

Ian Pearson introduced the report (Agenda Item 9), which aimed to provide an update on the Dedicated Schools’ Grant, High Needs Block (HNB) overspend and West Berkshire Council being invited to join the DfE’s ‘Delivering Better Value (DBV) in SEND Programme’.

The report was for information and addressed the overspend in the HNB in the context of what the Government had decided to do to address the issue facing local authorities. There was recognition that there were growing deficits across many authorities within their HNBs and therefore the Government had set up two programmes. The first programme was called the Safety Valve Programme and this was for authorities with extremely high deficits. There was then a lower tier programme called the Delivering Better Value in SEND Programme and West Berkshire, along with many other authorities, had been invited to join this. There was a timescale for when West Berkshire would likely enter the programme, which was spring 2023. This was because West Berkshire was in tier three of the Delivering Better Value in SEND Programme, which consisted of authorities with lower deficits. Local authorities in the first tier of this programme were those that had the highest deficits (but below the threshold of the Safety Valve Programme) and the starting point for these authorities was summer 2022 with tier two starting in the autumn.

The DfE was hoping to address deficits through a review of SEN services in the area. Remedial advice would be provided on approaches being taken and whether any changes were required to the SEN Strategy to help drive costs down. This should not be viewed as disconnected to proposals in the SEN Green Paper, which had been published in May 2022 alongside the Education White Paper/Bill.  Ian Pearson stated that there would be more to report on once West Berkshire had started the programme in the spring.

Catherine McLeod asked if the programme also covered early years with regards to early intervention. Ian Person confirmed that it would cover early years and he also highlighted that in the current financial year, through invest to save initiatives, some funding had been assigned to early years and specifically the area of speech and language. The more these issues could be addressed early on, the greater benefit there would be to children and also in terms of the level of support that would have to put in place subsequently and the cost of this support. It was hoped that the Green Paper would address this issue in depth. 

RESOLVED that the Schools’ Forum noted the report.