Safety Valve agreement
We have a financial agreement, called a Safety Valve agreement, with the Department for Education (DfE) to help tackle the financial challenges in providing services and support for children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), and their families.
The agreement started in the financial year 2022 to 2023 and is set to run for 5 years until 2027 to 2028.
Read the Safety Valve agreement.
About the Safety Valve Programme
The DfE started the Safety Valve Programme to help local councils that have the largest overspends in their SEND budgets.
It helps councils to get their spending on SEND back on track and meet legal requirements to balance their budgets. It provides extra funding and ensures they make changes to improve the local SEND system.
Safety Valve Programme and Kent
We must provide services and support for children and young people with SEND and their families. We also have to make sure their budget is balanced.
Kent, like many other councils, has struggled to meet the demand for SEND support and services within the budget given by the government, leading to overspending.
In 2021 to 2022, before the Safety Valve agreement, Kent spent 20% or £52 million more than the money given by the government to spend on SEND. Including overspends from previous years, the total overspend had built up to £97 million.
Continuing to manage the SEND system this way would have bankrupted us. This is because a rule (called a ‘statutory override’) which keeps this overspend off our books, will end in March 2026. After that, council taxpayers will have to cover the SEND overspend as well as pay for all other council services.
Inspectors from Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission who conducted an inspection revisit of Kent in 2022 commented that, despite Kent spending more than any other council in the country on SEND, it had serious concerns about the quality of services provided.
Improving services and reducing the SEND budget overspend are closely connected.
Money given to us by the government
The government is giving us £140 million to help pay off the overspend we have in our SEND budget. We will also contribute £82 million towards the overspend from our budget.
These actions stop this shortfall from showing up in our budget and falling to our council taxpayers to pay off.
The government does not give us the money all at once. We have to show them that we are making progress in getting the budget back on track. We do this by completing a monitoring report for them to review. If they are happy with our progress, they release a payment to us. So far, we have received every payment expected.
The government is giving us £140 million to help pay off the overspend we have in our SEND budget.
Overspending on SEND in Kent
We know from comparing data with other similar councils that our data is broadly similar in most areas. This is not the case when we compare SEND data with other similar councils.
There are 3 important differences in Kent.
1. The proportion of children and young people in the population who have an education, health and care (EHC) plan.
At the time we entered into the Safety Valve agreement, a pupil in Kent was 20% more likely, on average, to have an EHC Plan than in the rest of England. Kent has almost 21,000 children and young people with an EHC Plan at the end of February 2025.
Kent has almost 21,000 children and young people with an EHC Plan at the end of February 2025.
2. The proportion of children and young people who attended a state-funded or private special school
In 2023 to 2024:
- 17.7 out of every 1,000 children aged 2 to 18 in Kent were placed in a state-funded special school, compared with 12.5 nationally.
- 5.2 out of every 1,000 children aged 2 to 18 in Kent were placed in a private special school, compared with 2.8 nationally.
3. Spending on SEND in Kent
We spend more on most SEND services and support than the England and south east average, and more than the 10 nearest similar councils.
| About | Kent | England | 10 nearest similar councils | South east |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total place funding for special schools and alternative provisions or pupil referral units | £174 | £149 | £151 | £142 |
| Top-up funding (maintained schools, academies, free schools and colleges) | £423 | £357 | £296 | £329 |
| Top-up funding (non-maintained schools and independent schools and colleges) | £242 | £160 | £137 | £222 |
| SEN support and inclusion services | £66 | £64 | £73 | £63 |
| Alternative provision services | £33 | £18 | £13 | £16 |
| Hospital education services | £1 | £5 | £3 | £3 |
| Therapies and other health-related services | £12 | £5 | £3 | £11 |
Our focus moving forward
We are making changes in 5 areas, with schools and other education providers.
1.Increasing the ability and resources of mainstream schools to support children with SEND, so more can stay in mainstream education with their friends and peers, just like other council areas. This will reduce our reliance on special schools
All mainstream schools must provide some SEND support. We are helping schools meet their duties and the needs of children and young people in the local community through training and consultant support. Since September 2023, a team of Kent education leaders, called Inclusion Champions, have been working part-time with the us and schools to improve inclusion. One way we judge how inclusive our schools are by looking at Ofsted inspections, which mostly have very positive comments.
2. Making sure there are enough specialist places across the county to support children with severe and complex needs locally whenever possible
We want children to go to their local schools, wherever possible, so they have the support of their friends and get to know their area, helping them transition into adulthood. This means changing some state-funded special schools in response to concerns raised by Ofsted. These are explained in the Special School review.
We also needed some new special schools, so Nore Academy (for secondary social, emotional, and mental health needs) opened on 1 January 2025. Two more special schools for profound, severe, and complex needs are planned in Swanley and Whitstable.
We have also recently increased the number of places in some of our existing special schools.
For children in mainstream schools who need more support, we have opened 73 specialist resource provisions in mainstream primary and secondary schools. With more opening from September 2025 where needed.
3. Reviewing the system of EHC assessments, plans and annual reviews to make sure the decisions we make are robust, clear, and consistent
The process of handling assessment requests, evaluating the child, deciding on an EHC plan, and drafting it can be stressful for families. It is also costly for the education and health system in Kent.
Since 2015, the number of EHC plans (or statements, as they used to be known) issued in Kent increased rapidly.
We have reviewed the decision-making process to make sure it follows statutory guidance. The decisions we make and the content of EHC plans are checked to provide assurance of quality, consistency and accuracy.
Find out more about the work we've done to turn the tide on EHC plans in Kent.
4. Developing a robust post-16 offer across the county with clear pathways to independence for children with SEN, through increased post 16 opportunities for preparing for adulthood
While Kent has good post-16 options, there are gaps in lower-level qualifications. Schools, colleges, specialist providers, and our Community Learning Service are working together to fill these gaps. Young people with SEND are more at risk of not moving into jobs, education, or training, so targeted services are needed to prevent this. They may also need changes to settings, course design, or length to succeed.
By offering different pathways to work, like supported internships, employment, and apprenticeships, young people with SEND can gain the skills and experience to enter the workplace confidently and become financially independent.
5. Continuing to work closely with NHS Kent and Medway to understand SEND needs, the reasons for increasing needs, and ensuring clear clinical assessments and the funding associated with it
Children with SEND have needs ranging from mild to very complex. Some need extra support from both education and health. Timely health support is essential for them to access the right education.
Education and health staff need to understand their roles in supporting these children.
This means making sure children at all education stages get health support to attend local schools, that schools are helped to resolve any issues that might stop a child with disabilities from being able to attend, and that both health and education are funding the services they provide.
Benefits of Safety Valve to schools and settings
There are many benefits, including:
- continuing to provide schools with extra funding for SEND support (over £15 million in 2023 to 2024)
- additional funding to schools with a high proportion of children identified with special educational needs
- keeping a range of non-statutory SEND services including:
- the Specialist Teaching and Learning Service, whose staff work with individual children and young people, and train staff on complex and less common special needs like severe dyslexia.
- our SEN Inclusion Advisers who advise schools on the overall support and resources they can provide to meet the needs of all pupils including those with SEND. They also work with SENCOs, and monitor the quality of school SEND support. If a request to assess doesn't meet the threshold for an EHC plan, this team helps the school use the assessment reports to provide tailored support for the child.
- the Portage Early Years service and SEN Early Years practitioners
- supported employment and internships
- supporting schools and settings to adopt the Balanced System®, where everyone involved with a child supporting their speech, language, and communication
- contributing to the extensive training offer for education providers including NurtureUK, Autism Education Trust programme and the Partnership for Inclusion of Neurodiversity in Schools (PINS).
Monitoring the Safety Valve agreement
We must submit monitoring reports three times a year to the DfE. The reports explain the progress we are making to bring our spending on SEND in line with the money given to us by the government, while continuing to meet our obligations to children, young people and their families.
The reports use the template provided by the DfE and are written for government staff to read, rather than the public. However, elsewhere on this page we explain what we are doing and why as part of the agreement.
We publish the latest reports after they have been submitted to the DfE.
- Monitoring Report 6 - November 2024 (PDF, 351.3 KB)
- Monitoring Report 5 – August 2024 (PDF, 287.7 KB)
- Monitoring Report 4 – May 2024 (PDF, 282.4 KB)
- Monitoring Report 3 – December 2023 (PDF, 271.0 KB)
- Monitoring Report 2 – September 2022 (PDF, 225.1 KB)
- Monitoring Report 1 – June 2023 (PDF, 245.5 KB).
Our progression
As with any five year plan, it is difficult to accurately predict what is going to happen, particularly when many factors cannot be controlled.
We are aiming to have paid off the overspend and be delivering services within our annual grant for SEND spend by the end of March 2028. We did well in both 2022 to 2023 and 2023 to 2024. Due to costs rising more than anticipated, at the end of this financial year 2024 to 2025 we expect the overspend to be £10 million more than planned. This is 5% of the total budget we have for SEND.
We regularly report the financial position to our Cabinet. View the Cabinet meeting minutes.
Our achievements
- Our year-on-year spending increases are slowing down as changes in the SEND system begin to take effect.
- Mainstream school staff have attended training and made changes to become more inclusive.
- There are an increasing number of children and young people with SEND are being successfully educated in our most cost-effective state-funded sector (both mainstream and special schools) while pupils attending high-cost independent private schools is steadying.
Our challenges
- The rapidly increasing cost of special school places as a consequence of inflation.
- Rising levels of additional financial support requested by mainstream and special schools
- Like much of the country, there are more children and young people being educated out of schools
- Delays (outside our control) to the building of the two new special schools which means more children and young people being educated in private independent schools at an additional cost of up to £30 million.
Alternatives to the Safety Valve
After the 2022 Ofsted and CQC inspection and talks with the DfE about the overspend on our SEND budget, the government was likely to have considered intervening.
This would have involved a team of commissioners who work for the Secretary of State agreeing with senior council officers to quickly implement an improvement plan.
Our rapid changes in leadership, governance, and performance, along with the Safety Valve agreement, helped avoid this.
We could have chosen not to join the Safety Valve Programme, but this would have meant making £140 million in cuts across the council or raising council tax by about 25% towards paying off the overspend.