“Anxious” families are racing to secure funded support for their children with special educational needs and disabilities ahead of Labour reforms.
Councils have seen requests for education, health and care plans (EHCPs) – legal documents that describe children’s additional needs and unlock extra funding – rise by up to 49 per cent, The i Paper can reveal.
The Treasury was briefed by education sector figures this summer about the special needs reforms fuelling a rise in EHCPs that was bigger than expected, this newspaper understands.
Under the reforms, EHCPs will be reserved only for children with the most complex needs from 2030.
But youngsters who already have a plan in place before 2030 will be able to keep them until they are reassessed at either the end of primary or secondary school.
The County Councils Network is now warning rising costs from the “surge of EHCPs that many councils have seen” could fuel council tax rises or further cuts to services – unless additional funding is secured.
The areas with ‘surging’ SEND requests
A memo given to the Treasury, seen by The i Paper, included data from five councils – four of which previously received multimillion-pound government bailouts to help fund their special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) services.
In the London Borough of Haringey, EHCP assessment requests rose by 49 per cent between December last year and January 2026, compared with the same period the previous year.
The Government officially announced plans to overhaul its support for pupils with special needs in February, but reports on the direction of change had already surfaced in late 2025.
Haringey Council agreed a £30m government bailout in 2023 under the “Safety Valve” programme in which 38 areas got extra cash to cut ballooning SEND deficits.
A Haringey Council spokesperson said they continue to monitor the volume of requests, but the increase earlier this year has not been sustained.
Surrey County Council said it received a record 413 requests in March this year alone, up 13 per cent on March last year, when 366 requests were made. The local authority agreed a £100m bailout in 2022.
Wokingham Borough Council’s assessment requests jumped by 13 per cent from January to March this year, compared with the same period in 2025.
The local authority, which agreed a £20m government bailout in 2023, had previously reported a 13 per cent drop in requests in 2025.
Parent ‘anxiety’ over reforms
Prue Bray, the Wokingham’s deputy leader, said: “The reason for this [rise] is anxiety amongst parents and families about the Government’s SEND reform plans, which aim to educate more children with additional needs in mainstream schools with appropriate support.
“Given all the issues with SEND provision, it is understandable that parents have lost trust and are worried that the changes are being made to save money through restricting access to EHCPs and will mean that some children will not get the support they need. So they are applying for EHCPs now.”
The London Borough of Hillingdon, which agreed a bailout of £26m in 2022, reported an 8 per cent rise in EHCPs issued in 2025-26, reversing a decline it had reported the previous year.
In Blackburn with Darwen, EHCP needs assessments rose 13 per cent in the year to March, according to the memo given to the Treasury.
SEND rises ‘could fuel council tax hikes’
Despite the bailout, Bray said funding in Wokingham “remains an issue” and they are running a “significant deficit” on SEND spending.
Councils have submitted local SEND reform plans to the Government which, if approved in the next few weeks, will mean that 90 per cent of their deficits until April 2026 will be paid off. Current deficits total more than £5bn.
But Bill Revans, SEND spokesperson for the County Councils Network and leader of Somerset Council, said local authorities will have to pick up the tab for increased costs to meet rising demand for support after April.
And if EHCP applications continue to rise at the current rate, he said councils’ SEND deficits would surge back to their current levels as soon as next year.
“The perception amongst some parents, understandably, is that their children might be more favourably treated under the current system rather than the proposed system in the White Paper,” Revans said.
“If they were considering applying for an EHCP, that brings forward that application which then puts unexpected and additional pressure onto council resources.”
Any rises in costs for councils would likely fuel council tax rises and cuts to services, the County Councils Network warned.
Three more councils that received SEND bailouts told The i Paper demand was rising in their areas.
In Wiltshire, EHCP requests rose 6 per cent in January to August. The council is “concerned that uncertainty surrounding future national SEND reforms may be contributing to increased requests for assessment and additional demand on an already stretched statutory system”, according to a local authority source.
Councillor Jon Hubbard, the cabinet member for SEND at Wiltshire Council, said forecasts have been revised upwards to reflect growing requests, which have been accompanied by a rise in EHCPs being agreed.
Medway Council increased its forecasts in April for the number of EHCPs it expects to be granted.
Blackpool had an 8 per cent increase in requests in April to June 2026, compared with the previous year. A council spokesperson said it is seeing “some evidence of parents and professionals seeking to ‘future-proof’ support arrangements”, with more applications for two-year-old children.
‘Support waiting lists seem never ending’
The rise is putting further pressure on already stretched services.
Some parents who have their requests refused are already waiting until March 2028 for a tribunal hearing due to a large backlog of cases, Blackpool Council said.
Dr Elizabeth Rhodes, national lead for student inclusion at Oasis Community Learning which runs 58 schools, said some of their pupils are waiting as long as two years for their EHCPs to be processed.
“We are seeing a lot of our schools really struggling to support children whose assessments have been delayed… on waiting lists that seem to never end,” she said.
‘I fear my daughter will take her own life without more support’
Michelle Watson, 48, applied for an EHCP assessment for her 10-year-old autistic daughter in July.
Her daughter is often absent from school and struggles with anxiety and depression. She becomes very withdrawn, has panic attacks and is unable to leave the house for school.
At age eight, she said she “wanted to kill herself”.
“For girls and boys who are autistic, there’s a higher rate of suicide or attempted suicide, and that’s what I’m trying to prevent,” Watson said.
Watson is being threatened with prosecution if her daughter’s school attendance does not improve.
Sefton Council rejected her request last month, saying the support her school already provides is adequate.
Watson, a British Sign Language interpreter, has asked the council to reconsider via its mediation services, which are offered to parents for free and intended to resolve disputes before they are escalated to tribunals.
She believes the council rejected her request as a “stalling tactic” because they are “inundated” with “panicking” parents.
Watson does not believe the SEND reforms will provide enough support for her daughter if she does not secure an EHCP because the proposed alternatives are not “tailor-made”.
“I will demand she gets more support,” she said. “I’m not going to let it go. I can’t, because I am at risk of losing my daughter.”
Sefton declined to comment.
This could be over a backlog in assessment cases, or where an assessment has been agreed but “there’s no educational psychologist to do the assessment, which is an issue in quite a few of our local authority areas”, she added.
Leora Cruddas, chief executive of the Confederation of School Trusts, a trade body representing academies, said most plan to open or expand SEND resource bases in their schools over the next year to “help meet this growing need”.
But “this is really challenging when budgets are being stretched just to provide routine teaching”, she added.
Wokingham is building more SEND units and planning two new special schools to help meet demand.
Ashlawn School in Rugby, Warwickshire, is setting up specialist SEND provision, having outlined plans for support aimed at children with autism.
Helen Stevenson, chief executive of the trust that runs the school, said children with SEND would be supported in dedicated classrooms.
This would help them “serve the needs of every child within our immediate community and avoid the situation where children with particular support needs are having to travel great distances to get the support that they require”, she said.
A Department for Education (DfE) spokesperson said they “inherited a SEND system under immense strain, with record numbers of EHCPs, families waiting months for support and poor outcomes for children”.
“We are changing that: investing over £4bn to bring specialist support directly into schools before needs escalate.”
Responses to a consultation on SEND reforms are being analysed. Officials will “continue to work closely with schools and parents across the country to make sure everyone has confidence in the system we’re building”, the DfE said.
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