Asked directly whether the Department for Education would publish the local SEND reform plans submitted by councils, the education minister Georgia Gould said it would not commit to doing so. In a written answer on 21 October to Labour MP Nesil Caliskan, Gould said the plans were "live, operational documents owned by Local Area Partnerships, which decide whether to publish". The department will publish only confirmation of which areas have approved or deferred plans, and grant allocations for councils "with plans that have met the threshold", "in due course".
Those plans unlock the largest intervention on council SEND deficits so far. On 9 February 2026, Alison McGovern, then the local government minister, announced that the government would cover 90 per cent of councils' high needs Dedicated Schools Grant deficits built up to the end of March 2026, a sum projected to be worth over £5 billion. The money is paid as a High Needs Stability Grant in autumn 2026, but only once a council has submitted its local SEND reform plan and secured the department's approval. Councils carry the remaining 10 per cent. Former Safety Valve councils are promised at least the grant they would have received under their old agreements.
The grant clears deficits that already exist. It is not £5 billion of new spending on support for children. In a written answer on 24 March, McGovern said clearing the deficits could reduce councils' financing costs by an estimated £300 million by 2027/28. That is a government forecast, and the answer did not set out how it was calculated.
The same answer said the approved plans "will also be used to assess ongoing performance and delivery to target support and challenge throughout the reform period". The plans are therefore the yardstick the department will use to judge each council for years to come.
Approval is decided at the top of the department. Schools Week reported that a SEND delivery board chaired by Tim Coulson, the department's regions group director, reviews the plans, with Lucy Powell, Education Secretary since 20 July 2026, making the final approval decisions. Under the grant conditions, the Secretary of State can reduce, suspend or withhold payments, or require money to be repaid.
So the department sees every plan and controls the money attached to it. Parents and councillors in a given area may see nothing beyond a line confirming that their council's plan was approved.
The plans can be published without difficulty. In September, Schools Week published 40 draft plans on an interactive map. They varied in length and detail, and the published documents were only part of what councils sent to the department. A data return spreadsheet and other appendices were, in the paper's words, "less readily available". The department told Schools Week that approval "doesn't mean delivery arrangements are fixed or final", and that councils would keep developing them as national reforms progress. On that account, the version of a plan the public can see may not even be the version currently in force.
The last scheme that tied deficit support to local plans shows why that matters. Between 2020/21 and 2023/24, 38 councils signed Safety Valve agreements with the department under the previous Conservative government, getting money in return for measures to control spending and eliminate their deficits.
In October 2024 the National Audit Office found that, as of May 2024, the department judged 22 of the 33 councils with active agreements to be on track. It had suspended five agreements because councils had not met payment conditions. The NAO found that the department "does not yet know how these programmes will impact outcomes for children", and that its routine reporting focused "on activity, not progress achieving outcomes, which can give an overly positive view".
Research by Isos Partnership across ten Safety Valve areas, published by the department in July 2025, gave a mixed account. It stated that it was not an evaluation of the programme. Council leaders described the deals as financial "breathing space", and participants credited linked local projects with improving early identification and local specialist provision. A minority of school leaders and parents said access to support, particularly through Education, Health and Care Plans, had become harder. The researchers said it was "impossible to prove a direct connection" between Safety Valve and reduced access. They also found the agreements contained no explicit targets to cut the number of plans and did not change the legal framework. They warned that a focus on financial trajectories could pull against improving children's experiences.
The new scheme keeps the same basic exchange as Safety Valve: deficit support for an approved local plan. Councils keep their statutory SEND duties throughout.
The department made its first decisions on the plans in October, and councils whose plans were not approved can resubmit in November. The approvals and allocations the department has promised to publish will show which councils are getting money. Under the policy Gould set out, they will not show what each council has committed to do in return, or the measures the department will use to judge whether it has.