It’s hard to keep track of things with the current flurry of recent reports, ‘open conversations’ and shady briefings on SEND.
But back in March 2025, the government announced some good news:
“10,000 new school places will be funded for children with SEND… … £740 million is being invested by the government to deliver adaptations, expand specialist units in mainstream as well as create new places in special schools – enabling more children to succeed at a school close to their homes and families.”
Government announcement
This £740 million has now been handed over to local authorities to spend. The government is clearly hoping LAs will use it to ramp up mainstream SEND provision on a large scale.
So has this money created 10,000 new school places for children and young people with SEND ?
No, not yet—and even if it hits that target, it probably won’t do so until at least 2028.
Are most of these new places going to be in mainstream schools?
No, they aren’t.
So what’s going on here?
Old wine, new, smaller bottles
The £740m grant was dished out to LAs last summer. It’s part of a long-running scheme called the High Needs Provision Capital Allocation (HNPCA).
The HNPCA was set up by the previous government in 2021 to provide councils with extra capital funding to create and improve infrastructure for SEND. If you want to see how much funding your LA has received, the data is here.
The £740m is just for the current financial year, running from April 2025 to March 2026. More SEND capital funding is coming—around £3 billion over the next four years. We covered this in a post late last year.
When looking at how this sort of funding is spent, there are a few things to bear in mind:
- This is capital funding. It pays for buildings and kit. These things, done right, can make a really positive difference to the quality of education our kids get. But it doesn’t pay for the specialist staff who actually deliver the provision. That comes out of revenue funding, a different financial pot that’s undergoing a Fukushima-style nuclear meltdown right now.
- The amount of SEND capital funding being dished out by the current government is significant. But as a real-terms average, it’s LESS per year than the previous government handed out.
- This grant isn’t formally ring-fenced, although local authorities have to account for its use to central government. But while LAs have to spend the grant on SEND infrastructure, they’re fairly free to spend it on capital projects that they themselves choose.
Free to choose, but strongly suggested to toe the line…
When doling out this year’s HNPCA grant, the Department for Education (DfE) made it pretty clear how they wanted LAs to use it:
“We strongly recommend that local authorities use capital allocations to invest in their mainstream provision. In particular, we anticipate that local authorities may wish to invest in:
I. creating specialist provision within mainstream schools (SEN units and Resourced Provision)
II. adaptations and improvements to the mainstream environment
III. special school expansions (where appropriate)
That message also came through very strongly in ministers’ responses to written parliamentary questions (PQs). The extract below is taken from written responses from multiple PQs in 2025:
“This funding is intended to create specialist facilities within mainstream schools that can deliver more intensive support adapted to suit the pupils’ needs. It can also be used to adapt mainstream schools to be more accessible and to create special school places for pupils with the most complex needs.”
However, by the end of 2025, the DfE’s boilerplate response to this type of PQ had changed slightly:
“To support specialist provision, in December, the department announced at least £3 billion for high needs capital between 2026/27 and 2029/30. This builds on the £740 million invested in 2025/26, which is on track to create around 10,000 new specialist places.”
The responses to recent PQs have become a lot less specific about mainstream placements. Why?
Because the DfE has probably recently discovered that, for the most part, LAs haven’t invested this grant in mainstream SEN units and resourced provisions. They’ve used the freedom that Whitehall gave them to allocate most of the grant to special school projects—much as they have done with previous iterations of this grant.
How do we know that? By collecting a truck-load of financial data, cleaning it up, and running it through the SNJ “supercomputer”*.
Following the money
As part of the HNPCA’s conditions of grant, the DfE asks each LA to send an assurance return so that they can see how it’s being spent.
We asked LAs to send us a copy of the assurance return that they sent back to the DfE, and the vast majority of them did: we have returns that cover over 80% of England’s SEND population.
That data allows us to see how the 2025-26 HNPCA grant is being allocated, at least, up to a point. That’s because the data we received varied in quality from immaculate to rough as a badger’s arse.
A lot of the data has been miscoded. Some of the entries are classified as “high-needs placement” creation, when they’re not. Some of the claimed project funding isn’t mathematically possible. Other projects could only have been funded by this year’s grant if the LA in question had mastered time travel.
LAs have also (completely reasonably) combined this grant with other sources of capital funding to create some of the new or improved SEND infrastructure. For many projects, that means the contribution that the 2025-26 HNPCA made to creating new SEN placements is a tiny fraction: it wouldn’t be accurate to say that this grant has created those placements.
And finally, some of the original plans for this funding have now been rendered obsolete by recent government policy decisions on special free schools.
So we’d recommend taking any claims about how many new places this grant has created with a large pinch of salt—and that includes our own.
All clear? Then on with the numberwang. Check Tania’s infographic at the end for a quick and easy guide.
How many new SEND placements will this grant create, and when?
We compiled around 3,000 line items of data, and mined it for projects funded mostly out of this year’s £740m HNPCA grant.
Extrapolating from the data we have, it looks like the 2025-26 HNPCA grant will initially create around 7,000 new placements for children and young people with SEND, once these projects that it funds open their doors for the first time. Once those projects are completed in full, that number looks set to rise to around 9,000-10,000 places.
It also looks like the grant is being used to renovate knackered facilities for an extra 1,000 pupils. And as with previous years, the 2025-26 HNPCA grant is paying for a whole host of adaptations, individual accessibility projects, and investment in infrastructure that won’t create new placements, but can benefit a wide range of children and young people with SEND.
It takes time to create new high-needs SEND placements. Sometimes, this can be quick. For example, if you’re simply renovating an existing part of a school to create a cheap resource base. More often than not, it takes years, particularly if it involves acquiring land, building a new block, making significant adaptations to a school estate, or building a new school.
So, most of these new places won’t be usable until at least September 2026. Many of them won’t be usable until at least the 2027/28 academic year. And the magic 10,000 place target for this dollop of grant funding probably won’t be hit until the 2028/29 academic year.
So when local or central government makes claims about the impact that this investment is having, pay close attention to the language tense they use. The grant will have an impact—eventually—but not straight away.
Where are the new SEND placements going to appear?
Most of the new places created by the 2025-26 HNPCA grant will be run by special schools and AP settings: roughly 4,600 places in special, and a further 500 places in stand-alone AP.
On top of that, around a third of the new places created (roughly 3,300) will be in mainstream SEN units or resourced provision. That’s a higher proportion going in this direction than we’ve previously seen with these grant allocations, but it’s still firmly a minority.
Things are a bit more complicated once you look under the bonnet though:
- Most of the new places that’ll be created in special schools will be created by expanding existing schools…
- …but a large number of these new places (more than 1,200 of them) will be in ‘satellite provision’ located on a different site. This will be mostly down to special schools operating on multiple sites, either for lack of space on their original site or to get wider geographic coverage. But in some cases, special schools will be operating some of their provision on the grounds of a mainstream school.
New special free schools? Perhaps not…
Some local authorities had planned to invest their High Needs Provision Capital Allocation grant in brand-new special free schools. Close to 1,000 new places in these schools were mainly going to be funded this way. BUT, these LAs are now going to have to think about a Plan B, after a move by the Government that made its road ahead on SEND clear.
In December 2025, the DfE crashed through LAs’ plans by unplugging the ventilator on many of these special free school projects. Some projects have been cancelled entirely, but in other cases, it’s given LAs a choice (of sorts) to be made by the end of February. The LAs can either continue with the slow process of continuing the special free school projects, or they can take a wodge of extra capital funding instead.
The DfE says the extra funding they’re offering LAs would be enough to create the same number of specialist places as the cancelled special free schools. It’s not clear what their calculations are based on.
Flexing the power of the purse
The upside of taking this offer: the extra capital funding will start flowing later this year, and LAs can use it freely to fund other projects that might create new specialist places more quickly.
The downside: by our reckoning, the extra funding that the DfE is offering is usually around one-third of the cost per place of building the special free school.
That’s a lot less, and it means it’d probably be used to expand existing provision that’s often really stretched already. On top of that, the LAs in this position already have really big shortages of special school places.
The DfE are clearly hoping that LAs will take their hefty hint and invest more heavily in mainstream SEN units and resource bases. And some LAs definitely are taking the hint: Warwickshire, for example, invested most of their 2025-26 HNPCA money this way.
We estimate that the 2025-26 HNPCA grant will probably help establish more than 200 brand-new mainstream SEND units or resource bases. But funding the places is far from the whole cost. Paying for the specialist staff to make the units and bases work well when they do open is another matter entirely.
Cash mostly being used to plug the (some) specialist provision gaps
But for the most part, LAs are using this grant money in exactly the same way as they’ve done previously: to help stem chronic and persistent place shortages in the special school sector.
As in previous years, LAs are also mostly investing in areas of specialist SEND provision where there are big shortages: provision for autistic pupils, for children and adolescents with social, emotional and mental health needs, and for those with severe or profound and multiple learning difficulties. Very few new places have been created for kids with sensory impairments, physical disabilities, or speech and language needs.
And as also in previous years, the vast majority of this capital grant is directed at schools. Around 15% of young people with Education, Health and Care Plans (EHCPs) attend post-16 colleges, but only around 2% of the new places created by this grant will be in the post-16 sector.
It’s difficult to pick out capital investment in early years support from the data, but only around 1% of the new SEND placements created by the 2025-26 grant were explicitly earmarked for under-5s settings. Some LAs also used this funding to set up new assessment centres for children in the early years phase, to help identify needs better. But in all, the lack of explicit investment in early years provision was striking.
Portakabin central
The longevity and quality of some of this investment also looks questionable. Many LAs stated in their HNPCA assurance data returns that the additional places they were creating would be situated in portable, modular or temporary buildings. While the quality of this type of building has improved a lot since the freezing, shaky terrapins of Generation X’s youth, there will be extra challenges to making these buildings fit to meet the sensory needs of some SEND pupils.
As ever, it’s a postcode lottery. For example, London boroughs aren’t using this grant much to pay for temporary buildings: they’re facing a sharp drop in pupil numbers, so they have a lot more empty or emptying school estate that they can use. In other parts of the country, it’s a different story.
What does this all mean?
A big chunk of what we’re describing here is a very good thing. Taken in totality, this capital investment will make it easier for skilled and specialist staff to meet the needs of thousands of children and young people with SEND—just as the £2.7bn of HNPCA funding allocated by the previous government did. We found almost no evidence that LAs are using this funding for purposes other than high-needs SEND investment.
But if the current government hoped that this £740m grant would be transformative, that it would prompt local authorities across the country to radically overhaul the quality and quantity of their mainstream SEND offer, then they’ll probably have been disappointed.
There’s £3 billion more of this HNPCA funding coming down the pipe over the next four years. The government will set out how it’s being allocated in the spring.
The state special school sector is running over capacity by thousands of places. Left to their own devices, LAs will probably continue to use future HNPCA funding to address that shortfall. Whether that’s a good thing or not depends on your take on inclusion.
So if Whitehall wants to see more of this £3 billion hosed at mainstream, it’ll probably have to direct things more explicitly and strategically than it’s done so far.
Despite years of consultant-fuelled chin-stroking, there is still no national strategy to develop provision for pupils with low-incidence, high-needs SEND. Incredibly, despite billions of SEND capital investment, it looks likely that there will be fewer high-needs places for deaf children and children with visual impairments in 2026 than there were in 2021.
The Schools White Paper—apparently imminent, apparently containing details of SEND reform plans—might contain some answers to this. Or it might not, depending on whether leaders have managed to overcome their crippling bout of policy dart-itis. But at some point, their darts are going to land somewhere. Or in someone.
* SNJ Supercomputer, AKA Matt’s brain. And no, you can’t have a go.
HNPCA 2025-25 Infographic
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Also read:
- Beyond EHCPs: Why Inclusion Needs More Than a Document
- The Unacceptable Truth: 20 SEND legal rights at risk from the Government’s SEND reforms
- How health and family support systems are failing children starting school
- WEBINAR RECORDING! The implications for children’s legal rights to EHCPs and EOTAS of the Government’s SEND proposals
- When things go right: Shining a light on SEND Practitioners making a positive impact [Giveaway!]
- From suspicion to support: why the Government’s child protection reforms matter for disabled children
- Have your say on the future of transport for disabled children and young people
- Unison voices major concerns over SEND reform health plans for sick and disabled children out of school in the EOTAS consultation
- Top Tips for the EOTAS & EHCP consultation: Protect your child’s rights to statutory SEND support
- Navigating constraints: Why a former PCF chair thinks the current model is missing the mark for families
- Dear Secretary of State for Education, Lucy Powell: an Open Letter from Special Needs Jungle and SEND legal charity SOS!SEN
- Research: Disabled young people define inclusive education as “learning in the place that’s right for them”
- Mainstream SEND Funding: A simple explainer, another consultation, and why it really matters
- Capital carrot, SEND steamroller: The Government’s evidence-light reform route isn’t waiting for anyone
- Schools White Paper: What do we know so far about funding for SEND?
- SEND cash splash: What does it all add up to—and will ditching debt improve provision?
- Inclusion bases: a new label, a big ambition, same unanswered questions
- Fix SEND our way for 90% of SEND debt write off, Government tells councils, urging swift action on change. So much for co-production…
- EXCLUSIVE: LAs largely ignored Government’s “strong recommendation” on how to spend SEND Capital cash
- The £3 billion SEND funding extravaganza: We’ve crunched the numbers so you can ask the right questions
- SEND funding reforms will be immensely painful—but the current situation is chaotic and sinking fast
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Matt specialises in SEND stats, data analysis, and in-depth investigations of policies. He has given evidence to several Parliamentary Select Committee inquiries, and his articles for SNJ on SEND funding, local government policy, and the SENDIST Tribunal have been quoted in Select Committee inquiry reports and national media.
- Top Tips for the EOTAS & EHCP consultation: Protect your child’s rights to statutory SEND support - August 19, 2026
- Mainstream SEND Funding: A simple explainer, another consultation, and why it really matters - July 22, 2026
- EHCPs 2026: A relentless rise, but who’s surprised? Plus SNJ’s annual LA Hall of Shame - June 27, 2026
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