Council Deficits on Special Needs Forecast to Reach £10bn
County councils say deficits on support for children with special educational needs will reach a record £10bn by 2028, describing the position as catastrophic. Ministers recently cleared more than £5bn of historic debt; councils expect to have run that up again by April and doubled it within two years.
The deadline that makes this urgent is an accounting one. A statutory override currently keeps these deficits off council balance sheets, and it expires in April 2028 — at which point authorities carrying them become insolvent on paper. Hampshire alone forecasts a £200m deficit this year, with Surrey, East Sussex, Kent, Worcestershire and Norfolk each above £100m. The demand behind it is not disputed by anyone: 718,000 children and young people held education, health and care plans in January, a rise of 12.5% in a year and the steepest since 2014, with a further 1.3 million identified as having special needs; 94% of the 105,300 statutory assessments carried out in 2024 ended in a plan, and several councils expect nearly one pupil in ten to hold one by 2029. The councils’ spokesperson Linden Kemkaran was careful to locate the cause: the deficits are not the result of reckless spending but of “having to meet rapidly growing statutory demand… without funding keeping pace”. Ministers say they will set out details before March 2028.