Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if he will issue guidance to local councils on maintaining the appropriate bandings for children with Education Health and Care Plans, consistent with each child's level of need.

Local authorities are statutorily responsible for securing the special educational provision specified in a child or young person’s education, health and care (EHC) plan.

The department’s published high needs operational guidance is available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/high-needs-funding-arrangements-2021-to-2022.

It states that: “While we expect commissioning local authorities to work constructively with institutions to agree the levels of top-up funding required, local authorities where the student is ordinarily resident bear the ultimate responsibility for decisions on top-up funding, as they are accountable for spending from their high needs budgets… Where a local authority makes a large number of placements at an institution or range of institutions, a system for the local authority and institutions to agree levels of top-up funding in advance can be a very efficient way of allocating this funding. However, the final allocation of funding must be sufficient to secure the agreed provision specified in any EHC plan.”