Source · Select Committees · Education Committee
Recommendation 58
58
Rejected
Provide urgent capital grants and establish a national High Needs Fund for specialist SEND colleges.
Conclusion
We also recommend that the Department for Education provides a one-off capital grant for specialist SEND colleges to address serious and urgent concerns around the condition of buildings and facilities. Furthermore, the Department must create a ring-fenced High Needs Fund for specialist SEND colleges at the national level to reduce reliance on local authority discretion, which currently leads to additional administrative costs, duplication and waste. (Recommendation, Paragraph 213)
Government Response Summary
The government states existing annual funding mechanisms apply to special post-16 institutions but explicitly rejects creating a ring-fenced national High Needs Fund for specialist SEND colleges, stating local authorities determine priorities for un-ringfenced capital funding.
Government Response
Rejected
HM Government
Rejected
PLANS ALREADY IN PLACE Annual funding is available to help maintain and improve the condition of school buildings and grounds; this includes non-maintained special schools and special post-16 institutions with eligible students. For the 2025 to 2026 financial year, eligible schools can access funding through either: • school condition allocations (SCA), with funds paid to eligible bodies responsible for maintaining school buildings. • the Condition Improvement Fund (CIF)–a bidding round with funds paid directly to single academy trusts, small multi-academy trusts (MATs), small voluntary aided (VA) bodies and sixth-form colleges. • In addition, devolved formula capital (DFC) is allocated for individual schools and other eligible institutions to spend on capital projects. SPIs could benefit from a share of High Needs Provision Capital Allocations (HNPCA) that DfE provides local authorities. We do not have robust data on the share that has gone to SPIs. A recent LA survey indicated only around 5% of HNPCA goes to post-16 provision, of which SPIs form a subset. For SPIs that recruit nationally local authorities are likely to be less inclined to allocate funding where they send few or no learners. It is the local authority’s duty to provide places for SEND students, and that is why we provide capital funding at LA level. LA capital funding is almost always un-ringfenced and we are not considering changing that for colleges, because LAs have the best understanding of local needs. It is ultimately up to local authorities to determine how to best prioritise their high needs capital funding to address local priorities.