Decision details

          The Board considered a report of the Executive Director – Children’s Services, that sought approval for the proposals for the continued expansion of special educational needs and disability provision in Halton’s schools.

          The Board noted that in March 2025 the Council received notification from the Department of Education that it would be allocated a further £1.2m in High Needs Provision capital funding to support the provision of new places and/or to expand existing provision for pupils and students with high needs at Local Authority maintained and academy schools. In the autumn term 2025, officers wrote to all schools to seek expressions of interest in offering new or additional SEND provision at their school. Subsequently eighteen expressions of interest were received. Of these fourteen were identified for progression and details of these were set out in Appendix A.

Reason(s) for Decision

The Council was required to demonstrate appropriate identification of need against spend from the High Needs Capital Allocation Grant.

Alternative Options Considered and Rejected

None

Implementation Date

It was intended that the first phase of additional provision could be offered from September 2026 and the remainder by September 2027.

          RESOLVED: That the Board

1)    approves the commencement of the statutory consultation process for those schools where the Local Authority (LA) is designated as the ‘Decision Maker’ (Detailed in Appendix A), with regard to the implementation of new SEND provision;

2)    approves the progression of projects and capital expenditure for any school (LA maintained or Academy) where a statutory consultation is not required (detailed in Appendix A);

3)    approves the allocation of funding for capital expenditure incurred at those Academy schools detailed in Appendix A providing those schools undertake their own statutory consultation if required; and

4)    receives a further report detailing the outcome of any Local Authority led statutory consultations (providing the Board agree at this meeting to commence with those consultations).