Approval unlocks a £62.08m grant, due 30 November, against Havering's £68.97m SEND deficit. Council papers still forecast a £53.5m overspend in 2028-29.

Havering is set to have most of its £69 million special educational needs debt written off, after the Government approved its plan to reform the service.

The council announced the approval on 28 October. Its press release did not mention money. A report to the borough’s Schools Funding Forum does.

The Department for Education approved Havering’s Local SEND Reform Plan on 2 October. That makes the council eligible for a High Needs Stability Grant of £62.076 million, according to the report to the forum’s 15 October meeting. The grant covers 90% of the deficit the council had built up on special needs spending by the end of March 2026.

Payment is expected on 30 November, subject to the final allocation.

What is left after the grant

The deficit stood at £68.973 million at the end of 2025/26. Once the grant is paid, it should fall to £6.897 million, the report says.

That does not end the problem. Spending on children with special educational needs is still running far ahead of the money Havering gets for it.

The forum’s minutes from June record the council spending nearly £80 million on high needs against a grant of £45 million. Officers said the borough was first or second in London for the rate of increase in Education, Health and Care Plans (EHCPs), but among the lowest funded.

The reform plan’s own forecast, set out in the report:

  • the yearly overspend keeps growing, to a possible £74.4 million in 2028-29 without the reforms
  • with the reforms, it is still £53.5 million in 2028-29
  • the cumulative deficit could reach about £250 million without reform, or £214 million with it

The report says the plan’s measures “will not bring the position back into balance”. The Government has said help with deficits from 2026-27 onwards will depend on progress in delivering the plan.

What the plan will change

Havering has a £2.35 million Local Inclusion Partnership Grant this year to set up a service called Experts at Hand. It is meant to get specialist help into mainstream schools, nurseries and colleges earlier. The report gives an indicative split:

What Indicative spend
Occupational therapists and assistants £600,000
Expanding the council’s specialist teams, including educational psychologists £550,000
Speech and language therapists £500,000
Outreach from special schools and alternative provision £450,000
Programme leadership, commissioning and data £250,000

The plan also relies on:

  • more specialist and support units attached to mainstream schools
  • new special school places in the borough, so fewer children are sent to independent schools elsewhere
  • a freeze on the top-up rates the council pays schools for pupils with plans
  • a slower rise in the number of EHCPs

The June minutes note the borough has 11 special school places for every 1,000 pupils with special needs, which officers said was below average. The banding that decides how much a school gets for each pupil is under review. No changes have been proposed yet.

The Department for Education also told Havering to strengthen partnership governance, accountability, performance monitoring and evidence of impact, the report says.

How long new plans take

The council’s statement says families want “timely assessments”. Government figures show how far Havering is from that.

In 2025, Havering issued 132 of 413 new EHCPs within the legal 20-week deadline, 32%, according to the Department for Education’s EHC plans statistics. That compares with 60.3% across London and 45.5% across England. Havering ranked 27th of the 33 London authorities. A new plan took 24.6 weeks on average.

It has not always been this slow. In 2023, Havering issued 94.3% of new plans on time. In 2024 that fell to 29.4%.

What the council said

Councillor Kevin Gill, Cabinet Member for Children and Young People, said the approval was “a significant achievement”. He added: “We know that families want to see timely assessments, high-quality support, clear communication and services that work seamlessly together.”

He said approval “is not the end of the journey”.

What it means for you

  • If your child has, or is waiting for, an EHCP, nothing changes overnight. The legal duties on the council, including the 20-week deadline for a new plan, stay the same.
  • If you are a parent at a mainstream school, Experts at Hand is meant to bring more therapists and specialist advice into schools this year. Ask your school’s SENCO what it will get.
  • If you are a school leader, banding and top-up rates are being looked at by the High Needs Working Group, which reports to the Schools Funding Forum. Its next meetings are on 3 December and 14 January.
  • For council taxpayers, the grant removes most of a debt the council would otherwise have had to deal with. It does not stop new overspending from building up.

Sources