Recommendation 18

The Government’s use of the statutory override and one-off ‘safety valve’ funding are temporary measures and do not address the underlying mismatch between demand, costs, and annual Dedicated Schools Grant funding. They will not prevent local authorities from accumulating further deficits until the underlying mismatch is resolved, and we do not believe it is realistic to expect local authorities to manage down deficits of the scale of many billions of pounds in total over a period of two or three years. Without significant additional funding via the DSG to match service demand and costs, or a further extension to the statutory override - which would, at most, offer a further period of temporary respite - the sector faces a cliff-edge of section 114 notices.