Bristol parents facing long wait for SEND assessments
Parents are waiting nearly a year on average
Bristol parents are waiting on average a year for crucial assessments on whether their children can get special educational needs support. Budget cuts last year to early support have driven up demand for more expensive versions of help, and a massive backlog in assessments.
But there are now signs the council is turning the situation around, with a huge investment in educational psychologists. Labour criticised Greens, who have run the council for just over a year, for the long delays — while the Greens said they were a consequence of Labour’s cuts.
Parents have to wait an average of 50 weeks in Bristol to get an education, health and care plan, much longer than the legal deadline of 20 weeks. The latest data from March shows that three per cent of plans were finalised within 20 weeks, slightly up from just one per cent in February.
EHCPs are personalised plans for children with special educational needs and disabilities, which sets out what support they require. Across England an average of half of EHCPs are finalised within 20 weeks.
Bristol’s performance has worsened over the past couple of years, dropping from two thirds in August 2023, to a third in August last year, and now at just three plans for every 100 children. The data was published ahead of the children and young people policy committee on June 26.
The drop in performance is directly related to budget cuts which Labour passed shortly before the local elections in May last year, according to council bosses. Nonetheless, Labour is now blaming the Greens, who won those elections, for the increasing time that parents have to wait. The party claimed Bristol is now the “slowest in the country”, although this couldn’t be independently verified.
Labour Councillor Kerry Bailes said: “The council completed only three per cent of EHCPs on time in March — and only one per cent in February. This is appalling. This situation leaves parents and children in an awful limbo and cannot be allowed to continue.
“Addressing the SEND crisis is a challenge for all councils, but the fact Bristol is the slowest in the country should set alarm bells ringing. At the end of 2023, 48.5 per cent of EHCPs were issued on time. The Greens are taking our city in the wrong direction. Just listen to the experiences of SEND parents like me — they will tell you the situation feels much worse.
“EHCPs are essential for children to access education and healthcare — something needs to change. EHCP provision is a statutory duty — the public rightly expects the council to get this basic responsibility right. The Green-led council desperately needs to get a grip and turn things around urgently.”
Last year there was a huge jump in parents requesting an assessment for an EHCP, “almost entirely attributed” to Labour’s decision to cut funding for help at an early stage, according to the council’s education director Vik Verma, speaking to councillors in March. The number of requests is rising in Bristol much faster than the average increase across the South West.
There are now 1,276 children waiting for a needs assessment, which will decide whether they can get an EHCP and the associated support, according to the latest data. This is 405 more children than the same time last year.
Schools used to have £9 million from the council for early intervention, supporting around 1,000 pupils, known as “non-statutory top up funding”. Labour approved plans to cut this funding in February last year, despite warnings from parents that this would mean more expensive support was needed, such as with an EHCP.
According to Green Councillor Christine Townsend, chair of the children and young people policy committee, extra staff in the council’s SEND teams are now dealing with the backlog in assessments and the number of EHCPs completed is starting to improve. She added that the situation is “still not good enough” and the problem can “only be solved” by the government.
She said: “Since the Greens started leading the council and we set our first budget back in February, we have increased staff capacity in the SEND teams to deal with the backlog, invested £500,000 to increase educational psychology capacity, and ended the income generation work they were instructed to do by the Labour mayor instead of EHCP assessments.
“As a result, we are starting to see improvements in the number of EHCPs completed. But I know that this is still not good enough and will continue to work hard to get us to where we should be. Bristol Labour has blamed Greens for the consequences of their own cuts and have refused to get involved in the committee system to find solutions.
“Their councillors also failed to vote for the dedicated schools grant in the budget, which maximised funds directed to children with additional educational needs in the school funding formula. You could write on the back of a stamp the level of collective expertise Labour has in relation to school funding rules.
“Bristol Labour should spend their time calling for a long-term solution to this incredibly important issue that will only be solved with central government action.”
Because of the national crisis in SEND support, the council is now hurtling towards a financial cliff edge, along with many other English councils. The former Conservative government gave councils special permission to carry over a deficit year on year in their education budgets, due to rising demand and costs for SEND support — but only until March next year.
Without government intervention, many councils face effective bankruptcy when this permission ends, because the huge size of the deficits will be too much for them to be able to balance the books. The Labour government has promised a white paper this autumn looking at SEND reforms, which might include ways to fix the looming financial crisis.