Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, pursuant to the Answer of 2 July 2025 to Question 62262 on Special Educational Needs: Finance, whether her Department has provided guidance to local authorities on statutory override accounting for special educational needs and disabilities services deficits; and what estimate her Department has made of the aggregate level of such deficits in each local education authority in England.

As per the Answer of 2 July 2025 to Question 62262 on Special Educational Needs: Finance, this government recognises the pressures local authorities are facing because of their Dedicated School Grant (DSG) deficits and that the extension to the DSG Statutory Override is part of a phased transition to a reformed Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) system. The DSG Statutory Override is an accounting treatment, first introduced in 2020, that allows local authorities to exclude DSG deficits from their main revenue budgets. The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government engages regularly with local authorities and the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy on the impact of these deficits and the extent to which they are expected to grow. The government will provide more detail by the end of the year on the plan for supporting authorities with both historic and accruing deficits. We will set out more detail at the provisional Local Government Finance Settlement.