SEND placement costs, associated travel and PA costs for academic year 2022/2023
Case reference FOI2024/00311
Published 15 March 2024
Request
Please can you provide me with the name of the current educational placement (school) of any young people, 16 years of age and under, with educational health care (EHCP) plans or statements, placed in academy/maintained, independent or non-maintained provision?
Under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, I would like you to supply me with the information requested for the previous academic year - 2022/2023.
I would ask you to provide the information in an excel document, broken down under the following headings:
1. Category of Need (SEMH, ASD, etc.)
2. Name of School with postcode
3. Type of placement - (Day or residential placement)
4. Cost of placement per year
5. Cost of Travel including PA support, broken down by placement if possible and if not, as a total figure for transporting EHCP Children
Response
Please can you provide me with the name of the current educational placement (school) of any young people, 16 years of age and under, with educational health care (EHCP) plans or statements, placed in academy/maintained, independent or non-maintained provision?
Under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, I would like you to supply me with the information requested for the previous academic year - 2022/2023.
I would ask you to provide the information in an excel document, broken down under the following headings:
1. Category of Need (SEMH, ASD, etc.)
2. Name of School with postcode
3. Type of placement - (Day or residential placement)
4. Cost of placement per year
5. Cost of Travel including PA support, broken down by placement if possible and if not, as a total figure for transporting EHCP Children
A) The information requested for Questions 4 and 5 is not held in a form that would enable it to be located, retrieved and extracted within the Appropriate Time Limit which equates to 18 hours as defined by the Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limits and Fees) Regulations 2004.
Data on EHC Plans is currently complied for reporting to the Department of Education as part of statutory SEN2 returns based on a calendar year. To calculate the costs of each individual placement would involve researching the cost of any provision written into the Plan plus the separate costs of any transport where applicable. Provision might change during the year where additional needs might have been identified or otherwise. Similarly transport costs might be amended during the year if the child moved residence or changed placement. Our electronic reporting systems are unable to run a report for this information. To ascertain the data requested, officers would need to manually check individual files for this information. An initial search has shown that between 1,824 files would need to be manually checked. Officers would need to check each individual file, research the tariff the EHCP was paying, then review the plan to ascertain whether transport was agreed as part of the Plan. If it was, officers In Children's services would then need to liaise with colleagues in the Transport team to establish how much transport was costing. It is estimated that it would take 10 minutes to check each file in this manner. Once the details had been identified this would need to be noted and once all files had been checked in this way, the total figures requested could be calculated.
This would at a conservative estimate take at least 304 hours to complete. Where the Limit is exceeded Public Authorities are not obliged to supply the information requested by virtue of S12 of the Act. Please take this letter as a refusal notice under S17 of the Act.
However, within the 18 hour limit, we can provide answers in Excel or csv format, as requested, for the following:
• The number of children with an Education Health and Care (EHC) Plan maintained by Herefordshire in the reporting calendar year 2023. (Please note, it will not be possible to report the individual establishment and postcode of children with an EHC Plan as this would potentially lead to identification of individuals).
• The number of children with an EHC Plan broken down by primary need type.
• The overall income from the Department for Education for SEND provision and the overall expenditure on children with SEN support in 2023.
• The overall budget for SEND transport and the actual expenditure in 2023.
Please advise us if this is something you require.
Documents
This is Herefordshire Council's response to a freedom of information (FOI) or environmental information regulations (EIR) request.
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