Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what progress her Department has made in implementing the Safety Valve high needs intervention programme; and how many more local authorities she plans to invite to receive funding and support through that programme.

Since the Safety Valve intervention programme began in the 2020/21 financial year, the department has struck 14 Safety Valve agreements with local authorities with the highest cumulative deficits on their dedicated schools grants. The agreements hold local authorities to account for delivery of plans that will reform their high needs systems to function well and sustainably, in return for funding to eliminate remaining historic deficits, generally over five financial years. The department continues to monitor these agreements closely.

There are a further 21 local authorities currently involved in Safety Valve negotiations in the current financial year, 2022/23. Any agreements that the department makes will be published on gov.uk in March 2023.

The department has also introduced the new Delivering Better Value in SEND (DBVS) programme, which is working with local authorities with less severe, but substantial deficits. The programme shares the same aim as the Safety Valve programme, to support local authorities to run their high needs systems more effectively and sustainably.

We expect there to be a small number of local authorities that may join the Safety Valve intervention programme in future financial years where historic deficits remain high, but the department expects these authorities to tackle the underlying reasons for their deficit issues in the meantime, with support from the DBVS programme.