Open Letter to PM Burnham on SEND Reform

Dear Prime Minister,

SEND reform: a rights-and-readiness guarantee

Congratulations on becoming Prime Minister. I wish you every success in the responsibility you have taken on.

I write as the sole Labour member of Norfolk County Council, the first Labour county councillor elected in South Norfolk and, most importantly, as a SEND parent.

I joined Labour and stood for election in part because of our party’s achievements for children and education, and its belief that a child’s future should not be determined by income, postcode or disability.

I support the ambitions behind this Government’s SEND reform. Earlier intervention, greater consistency, more specialist expertise in mainstream settings, support closer to home and a system in which parents do not have to fight for every adjustment are all necessary. The current system is adversarial, inconsistent and financially unsustainable. The National Audit Office has concluded that increasing expenditure has not delivered consistently better outcomes and that the system urgently needs reform.

The investment in Experts at Hand, Inclusion Bases, specialist places and workforce training is welcome. So too is the commitment to invest before implementation, phase the transition and protect support received through existing EHCPs until at least September 2030. These are serious and positive steps.

You argued in December that reform should “start from a principle about nothing being taken away”, “cannot clearly be cost-driven” and that any eventual move away from the present EHCP system must be handled in a way that does not “destabilise or frighten”. You also called for change to proceed carefully and iteratively, by “truly listening” to young people and their families. I agree.

The concern I hear from parents is not that reform is happening, but that individual legal protections could be weakened before the alternative support has proved capable of replacing them.

The proposals place a statutory duty on settings to produce Individual Support Plans and describe them as legally backed. That is welcome. However, detailed day-to-day provision would sit within the ISP, with the education setting responsible for delivery. The final framework must answer plainly: what can a family compel, against whom and through which independent remedy when provision is not delivered? A statutory duty to write a plan would not, by itself, give a family an enforceable right to receive everything written within it.

There is a similar concern about the SEND Tribunal. Under the consultation, it could quash a local authority’s placement decision and require reconsideration, but could no longer name the placement itself. A legal backstop should resolve a dispute, not simply restart it.

Nor can inclusion be created through legislation or new terminology alone. Experts at Hand, Inclusion Bases and stronger mainstream provision could transform children’s experiences, but only if there are enough educational psychologists, therapists, specialist teachers, teaching assistants and properly trained staff.

A mainstream placement without the right expertise, staffing and environment is not inclusion. It is unmet need in a mainstream building. Some children will continue to require specialist settings and curricula; inclusion must be defined around the child, not the institution.

Trust is the greatest obstacle we now face. In 2024/25, 99 per cent of SEN cases decided by the Tribunal were recorded as being in favour of the appellant. That does not mean 99 per cent of all local authority decisions were wrong, but it helps explain why families are reluctant to surrender enforceable rights before a replacement system has proved itself.

I am therefore asking you to commit, in the Government’s response to the consultation, to a clear rights-and-readiness guarantee.

• First, the welcome staged timetable should be governed by published, independently assessed local readiness tests. No child should move away from existing protections, and no reduction in Tribunal powers should take effect, until the promised mainstream and specialist capacity is demonstrably operational. Dates alone should not determine readiness.

• Second, provision recorded in an Individual Support Plan should be individually and practically enforceable, with access to an effective independent remedy. The Tribunal should retain the ability to determine placement and provision, or families must receive an alternative remedy of equivalent strength.

• Third, the Government should publish a fully costed workforce and delivery plan covering educational psychology, therapy, specialist teaching, support staff, specialist places, early years, post-16 provision and SEND transport. Rural areas such as Norfolk need particular consideration.

• Fourth, the Government should publish a transparent account of what children, young people and parents said during consultation, what changed as a result, what was not accepted and why.

Success should be measured through children’s lived outcomes: whether they are safe, attending, learning, engaged, making progress and receiving the support promised. Fewer EHCPs, specialist placements or appeals should not be treated as evidence of success in isolation.

Labour’s current position in Norfolk should give us pause. Trust is quickly lost when people believe decisions are being made around them rather than with them. SEND reform is precisely the kind of issue on which families will judge whether Labour is listening and governing differently.

The 2014 reforms expanded important rights but were not matched by the capacity, funding and accountability needed to deliver them. Labour must not repeat that mistake, or answer failures of implementation by weakening the rights families rely on when the system fails.

The answer to a system that forces parents to fight is to make lawful support routine, not to make that fight harder to win.

This is not a call to retreat from reform, but to strengthen it with the safeguards and assurances families need to have confidence in the changes.

I would welcome your response and the opportunity to discuss how a rights-and-readiness guarantee could preserve the Government’s positive ambitions while rebuilding families’ confidence in Labour to deliver the change these children and families so desperately need.

Yours sincerely,

Cllr Ben Weston
Labour County Councillor for Hethersett
Norfolk County Council