SNJ Intro: Today’s post is from Measure What Matters, an independent public initiative examining transparency, accountability, and ethics across local government and public services- beginning with SEND, where systemic failure is most visible.
Recently, the group focused on Surrey County Council and its woeful track record on delivering provision for children with special educational needs and disabilities. Surrey, despite being a pathfinder for the 2014 SEND reforms, has, at almost every turn, failed to comply with legislation, failed families, failed its own case workers, and most of all, failed disabled children.
Nationally, the initiative has gathered more than 600 family testimonies documenting the lived experiences of parents and carers struggling to secure support for children and young people with SEND. Chris Coghlan MP, has shared these testimonies in letters to the Education and Local Government Select Committees, raising serious concerns about the unethical, unlawful, and harmful conduct of some local authorities in administering their SEND responsibilities.
The article speaks to the same issues we have reported on repeatedly over the years—the weaponised incompetence of LAs that are not interested in upholding the law. Yesterday, Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson spoke of “co-creating” a way forward for SEND, while setting out what she thought were the (un-co-created) five principles. But Measure What Matters believes she is set on wholesale legal changes, and isn’t convinced by new rhetoric.
In the first of two articles, Measure what Matters explores the work being done, what it reveals, and why it matters in the ongoing national debate on SEND Reform. If, for some reason, you’re still wondering why children’s needs escalate and parents are angry, read on…
The scale of deliberate SEND failure is a national scandal. By Measure What Matters
“The evidence now before us calls into question whether the foundational principles of lawful, ethical public administration are being upheld at all.”
Chris Coghlan MP (Dorking & Horley)
When the Education Secretary still insists on national media that the current SEND legal framework is “adversarial,” it might sound like empathy for struggling families. Yet in our view, this careful framing masks something far more dangerous: Ministers still determined to rewrite the problem so that the law itself becomes the villain, rather than confronting the unlawful and unethical behaviour of those charged with administering it.
We believe what we are witnessing is a carefully engineered political narrative—one designed to manufacture consent among her MPs for dismantling the current SEND legal framework and the rights it enshrines. This comes despite overwhelming evidence from hundreds of parents, campaign groups, charities, and educators who have spoken with remarkable consistency on this point. It is, quite simply, a demonstration of how determined the Secretary of State for Education, Bridget Phillipson MP, appears to be not to listen.
The announcement this week that the long-awaited Schools White Paper has been pushed back to Spring may be the first real sign that the Department for Education is wavering. Growing political pressure, including from her own back benches, is mounting fast and finally starting to bite. It is now clear there is little appetite anywhere in Parliament for any move that would weaken or roll back the statutory entitlements of children and young people with SEND.
Just last week, Helen Hayes, Chair of the Education Select Committee, acknowledged during questioning on local authority conduct on SEND, that the Committee recognises “the broken link between the powers local authorities hold and the responsibilities they are meant to discharge.”
Non-compliance is deliberate and a national scandal
“The issue in SEND is not an “adversarial legal framework” — it is the adversarial conduct of LAs themselves. When the law is followed, it works: it delivers the right support, at the right time, in the right setting“
Let us be clear: persistent, prolonged—and in some cases, deliberate—non-compliance with the SEND legal framework by the very authorities charged with upholding it has had devastating consequences for thousands of children, young people, and their families. In our view, the scale of failure can only be described as a national scandal.
And while we agree with much of what the Education Select Committee concluded in its SEND Inquiry—one of the most comprehensive, frank, and evidence-based examinations of the system to date—what it described as a “broken link” must never be used as justification or excuse for what has unfolded. The law did not cease to be law simply because LAs found it inconvenient, difficult, or merely preferred not to follow it.
The evidence we have gathered from families over the past four months paints a very different picture of reality. The issue in SEND is not an “adversarial legal framework” — it is the adversarial conduct of LAs themselves. When the law is followed, it works: it delivers the right support, at the right time, in the right setting. The injustice lies in the way that framework is being abused through routine maladministration, flagrant disregard for legal process, and a culture of obstruction that forces families—and often schools—into endless, exhausting cycles of legal challenge simply to secure rights they already hold.
Tackling unlawfulness in Surrey
Measure What Matters is a public initiative dedicated to restoring transparency, accountability, and data integrity in public services. Our purpose is simple: to make visible what is too often hidden—to show how governance, data, and decision-making shape people’s lives, and where they go wrong.
Our work began by forensically examining Surrey County Council’s handling of statutory SEND responsibilities. Surrey is one of the largest and most influential local authorities in England. What started as a single case study quickly revealed a pattern: missing performance data, governance breakdown, and rapidly deteriorating performance trends indicating a culture in which persistent and prolonged statutory failure appeared to have become normalised.
In August 2024, following growing calls for wider scrutiny, Measure What Matters launched a national testimony collection asking:
“Have you experienced dishonest, unlawful, unethical, or harmful behaviour from your Local Authority while seeking SEND support for your child?”
Within weeks, hundreds of families from every region of England responded. Their accounts revealed striking consistency: delay, obstruction, misinformation, and a collapse in public trust.
Each testimony has been anonymised, coded, and analysed by theme. Together, they now form one of the clearest qualitative datasets available on how families experience systemic non-compliance with SEND law in England. Add yours here
What emerges is not isolated mismanagement, but unethical, harmful, and unlawful conduct—embedded at scale.
Thematic Headlines
This document—already over a thousand pages—offers a sobering, candid account of persistent, institutionalised systemic failures: children left without education and pushed into crisis; entire families driven to the brink. It is also a rare window into the culture and conduct of LAs and their officers in the administration of statutory SEND support, as experienced and described by families and, in some instances, by children.
While the national debate continues to focus narrowly on the supposed “adversarial” nature of the legal framework and the enforceable duties it confers, these testimonies point to a far more troubling reality: a normalised pattern of maladministration and law-breaking, with duty avoidance routinely embedded as justifiable working practice. Families overwhelmingly report that it is not the law that’s adversarial, but the conduct they face from councils operating well outside the legal framework, and often with seemingly complete impunity.
- Maladministration and Ethical Breach
Families repeatedly report being ignored, misled, and run through obstructive case-handling seemingly designed to exhaust rather than resolve. Some examples go far beyond anything that could be described as “system strain”:
- Calls left unreturned;
- meetings un-minuted;
- nameless decision-makers;
- paper trails obscured;
- evidence withheld or ignored from both decision makers and tribunals; and
- redress routes (SENDIST/LGSCO) too slow or left toothless to create meaningful consequences.
- Abuse of Process (not “system breakdown”)
Families describe how routine, indefensible refusals for support are maintained for months, sometimes even over a year, then followed by late concessions within days of a hearing.
- LAs frequently ignore court directions, and face barring orders.
- Families describe how support is then slow-rolled or only partially implemented even after a court order or other agreement.
- A number of families describe being driven to Judicial Review, some repeatedly, simply to compel compliance with court orders already made – a situation that is unconscionable in Public Service.
- Accountability, Hollowed Out
Keywords linked to distress, trauma, mental health, isolation, financial crisis, and regression recur across all regions. The long-tail impact for children and their families appears to be both unmeasured and unmitigated. The disconnect is staggering. Our ongoing analysis of council documentation shows council leaders lamenting rising demand from young, working-age adults entering depleted adult social care budgets. Yet testimonies describe how, just down the corridor, officers are stripping away children’s lawful educational provision, blocking or delaying access to suitable education for months, sometimes years. The result is predictable and devastating: severe educational disruption, deteriorating mental health, and entire families pushed into crisis.
- The Risk of Eroding Rights: Schools Left Holding the Bag
Importantly, these testimonies indicate that statutory protection is perhaps most critical of all in mainstream education—not only for children and young people, but for schools and educators too. In chronically underfunded, overstretched mainstream settings, access to additional support must be legally mandated and properly funded, with clear statutory processes for thorough assessment input, review, escalation, and funding allocation. The Minister’s anticipated direction, waiving away enforceable rights for “less complex” children and shifting discretion to schools to simply get on and “manage” SEND, would appear to carry huge, unmitigated risks. Responsibility without the right expertise, without dedicated resources, and without legal enforceability, can lead to rationing by pressure and inconsistent outcomes. In effect, the diffusion of accountability to the point of dissolution.
Selected testimonies
Local authority 1: Parent to three children with EHCPs has been forced into Tribunal seven times and has submitted multiple complaints to the Ombudsman. The parent describes being lied to and ignored; their children denied education; and the family now facing long-term illness and mental-health breakdown as a result. Crucially, they identify the greatest harm as the cruelty in the way they were treated—not resource limitation, but conduct.
Local authority 2: Parent describes a breakdown in communication, with their case officer changing five times without notice. Their child has been out of school for seven months. No one from the LA has contacted the family during that time. The family lost their home; the child has since become agoraphobic with suicidal thoughts.
Local authority 3: “For four years our daughter has had no education. The LA conceded at Tribunal that the case “should never have gone before a judge.” It then failed to deliver the provision ordered. Panels misrouted three times, evidence lost, emails unanswered. She is now agoraphobic, completely isolated, and every report says EOTAS [Education other than at school], yet we are told to start the review again.”
Local authority 4: “In my day job as a mainstream secondary SENCO, I’ve held 250+ annual reviews. No LA case officer has ever attended or issued outcomes. We see delays, backtracking, withheld funding, and decisions deliberately pushed through in school holidays. Children’s needs go unmet, our requests for help ignored, with rising self-harm and regression; families face breakdown while schools fight for basic compliance.”
Key Content
The Bottom Line
Across the testimonies, one point is absolutely clear: children and young people with SEND are describing how they are being systematically and catastrophically failed by local authorities. Weaponised delays, obstructing the legal process, and unlawfully withholding provision. The result is staggering levels of institutionalised non-compliance: unlawfully gatekeeping what the law determines should be needs-led support, conceding late, then failing to deliver even when legally ordered to do so. The outcome: immeasurable harm, broken trust, and spiralling future costs.
The issue is not an “adversarial framework.” Where the law is followed, it works.
What simply cannot be ignored is the culture of obstruction, denial, and impunity that families are describing. It has corroded accountability, normalised illegality, and systematically undermined the legal framework. The impact? Hundreds, perhaps thousands of vulnerable children harmed by the behaviours of the very authorities charged with protecting them.
Where do we go from here?
Measure What Matters remains committed to expanding the national dataset and continuing to collect testimonies from across the country. Our upcoming analysis will set out, in detail, the scale, nature, and impact of systemic non-compliance with SEND law, ensuring these issues are understood, evidenced, and impossible to ignore or misrepresent in the ongoing debate on reform ahead of the delayed White Paper next Spring.
As Chris Coghlan MP wrote in his letter last week to the Education and Local Government Select Committees:
“The evidence now before us calls into question whether the foundational principles of lawful, ethical public administration are being upheld at all. In this context, it would be wholly inappropriate to extend further discretionary powers to Local Authorities, or to remove any of the existing legal protections for children and families, at a time when confidence in the integrity and functionality of the system has been so gravely undermined.”
In our view, nothing short of a fully independent, judge-led inquiry into the culture, conduct, and governance of local authorities will restore trust in public services and re-establish a lawful, transparent, and accountable system—one that protects children and upholds the principles on which our public institutions depend.
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Also read:
- The Ontario system: Are politicians considering a Canadian province’s SEND structure for England?
- The SEND Petition Debate: MPs speak up for EHCP rights at the start of big week of SEND news
- Why nurture groups and effective nurture practice are vital for whole school inclusion
- By almost any metric, SEND Safety Valve has failed, but you’d never guess from this entirely unbiased report
- 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”
- The toxic culture of obstruction that’s taken root inside England’s council SEND services is not only unchecked, it’s encouraged
- EHCPs 2026: A relentless rise, but who’s surprised? Plus SNJ’s annual LA Hall of Shame
- The relentless march of SEND reform only hears views that fit the narrative
What kind of government is “bold” enough to scrap statutory EHCPs from vulnerable children?May 16, 2025
The SEND reforms in the Schools White Paper reveal rights given, and rights stripped awayFebruary 24, 2026
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Don’t miss a thing!
Don’t miss any posts from SNJ – simply add your email address below. You must click the link in the confirmation email you’ll receive to activate your free subscription.
You can also keep up with us by following our
Want more? Be an SNJ regular donor!
SNJ is a non-profit and everyone who writes here does so voluntarily. We need your support to help us with costs by donating once or as a regular patron. Find out more here
- The toxic culture of obstruction that’s taken root inside England’s council SEND services is not only unchecked, it’s encouraged - July 3, 2026
- Not in our name: How manufacturing consent for proposed SEND reforms has broken the social contract. - March 23, 2026
- Part 2: The Testimonies. Children died; the system looked away. Will government SEND reforms make this scandal even worse? - February 23, 2026
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