Wandsworth’s special needs budget for the coming year was set yesterday. The projected overspend is £14.964 million. The plan to close it depends on a government grant that won’t arrive until autumn, requires conditions the council has not publicly confirmed it has met, and is subject to approval the government has not given.
The decision came at a Schools Forum meeting held at Wandsworth Town Hall, the moment Putney.news flagged two weeks ago as the point at which the council would have to show its hand. That article reported a £21 million accumulated deficit in Wandsworth’s special needs accounts and asked whether the council had a recovery plan. Now the budget is set, and the plan is as follows: a new government grant (the High Needs Stability Grant) will, if approved, cover up to 90% of the accumulated deficit. That grant is expected to arrive in autumn 2026 at the earliest.
The catch is the word “if.” The council’s own Schools Forum papers state the grant is available “provided each authority submits and secures DfE approval of a Local SEND Reform Plan” and that it will come “following DfE assurance processes and publication of final SEND reform arrangements.” Wandsworth has not publicly confirmed it has submitted such a plan or that approval is expected.
At the Children’s Overview and Scrutiny Committee on 10 February, Cabinet Member for Children Cllr Judi Gasser told councillors the government was “helping us with writing off the DSG deficit” and that a 90% write-off was available “as long as we show that we’re running the service very well, which of course we are.” The Schools Forum papers published today are less confident. They note that the DfE has emphasised “future support will not be unlimited” and that “councils must demonstrate credible plans for cost control and SEND pathway improvement.” The same papers describe the grant as designed in part to “reduce the risk of insolvency when the statutory override ends in 2028.”
The word “insolvency” stands out from the council’s own paper.
The same central government whose approval Wandsworth now needs recently cut the borough’s core funding settlement despite the council’s lobbying against the reduction, as we reported in February. That doesn’t mean the SEND grant won’t be approved but it does suggest that confidence in central government goodwill is not something Wandsworth can afford.
In the meantime, the squeeze on everyday SEND support has continued. Mainstream top-up rates, the funding mainstream schools receive for each child with additional needs who does not have a formal plan, have been frozen at 0% across all ten funding bands. In real terms, that is a cut. It affects the largest group of children in the system: those supported in ordinary classrooms without a legally enforceable plan.
The system is not failing operationally. Requests for formal education plans have plateaued at 576, almost exactly where they were last year, against a rising national trend. Wandsworth’s pupils with special needs rank sixth in England at Key Stage 2 and sixth nationally on the GCSE measure. The Early Response to Placement programme kept all 26 high-needs children placed with it in mainstream school last year. The money is still broken regardless. A trajectory that ran from £7.3 million to £10 million to £14 million does not reverse because the performance data is good.
Independent specialist school spending continues to rise, reaching £12.775 million (up £600,000 on last year) even as the council commissions 62 new places at cheaper resource bases to reduce reliance on those placements. The direction of travel is right; the speed is not fast enough to close the gap.
The statutory override that allows councils to run these deficits off their main accounts ends in 2028. The High Needs Stability Grant is designed to bridge to that deadline. Whether it arrives in time, and on what terms, is now the question Wandsworth’s schools and families are waiting on.
What Wandsworth Council was asked
Putney.news sent right-of-reply questions to Cllr Judi Gasser and Lisa Fenaroli, Director of Education back in late February. We’ve heard nothing back.
What we would like to know is whether Wandsworth has submitted its Local SEND Reform Plan to the DfE and when a decision is expected; what the cumulative deficit figure is as of 31 March 2026; what the council says to mainstream schools absorbing a real-terms cut while costs continue to rise; and whether the council has a contingency plan if the High Needs Stability Grant does not materialise on the terms assumed in today’s budget.
For families navigating the current system, Wandsworth’s Information, Advice and Support Service (WIASS) can be contacted at wiass.org.uk or on 020 8871 8061.
