Bailout for Bristol schools budget barely makes a dent in £50m funding black hole

The total deficit on the schools budget is forecast to hit £50m next March, marginally less than before the bailout

A bailout for Bristol's schools budget has barely made a dent with a gaping £50-million black hole still looming large. Bristol City Council staff are warning the government could ultimately pull out of its controversial Safety Valve deal unless the council starts spending less on specialist support.

This year the council is forecasting to have spent £13 million more than it had planned to on schools and education. When this is added to deficits in previous years, the combined total of cash the council needs to find to balance its schools budget is a whopping £50 million.

That’s a marginally smaller amount than what the funding black hole was, before the Department for Education gave the council its first multi-million bailout payment. Before the Safety Valve was agreed, the cumulative deficit was forecast to hit £56 million in March earlier this year.

The Safety Valve deal involves the DfE paying the council several large chunks of cash to write off its deficit. So far, the council has received £21.5 million from the government, with £53 million planned in total over the next few years, in return for carrying out reforms to balance the books.

However, headteachers were warned during a schools forum meeting on Tuesday, September 24, that so far the council is “somewhat off track”. The council is supposed to balance the books and no longer have a deficit in its schools budget by 2030, which is considered “very difficult”.

Steven Goodwin, a council finance manager, said: “The end goal is very difficult considering that we are off track from where we thought we might be. If we keep slipping off track, they [the Department for Education] might take further action. They could stop their contributions, and that would significantly hinder the deficit recovery.

“I don’t know what the next steps of that would be. That’s one stick they’ve got, and I know they have used that in other local authorities, stopping their contributions.”

Cambridgeshire, Dorset, Hillingdon, Norfolk, and Bath and North East Somerset had their Safety Valve payments suspended, while the Department for Education reviews their deals. According to Schools Week, this was due to councils not balancing their budgets fast enough.

Vik Verma, the council’s director of education, added: “The main lever would be a suspension of the Safety Valve, which I believe has happened in other local authorities. At this point that’s not where we are, despite being somewhat off track.”

Demand for SEND support is still rising in Bristol, and the council often has to pay for places in private schools with exorbitant fees. There is a shortage of SEND places within the city, and although a new special school is planned for Southmead, this won’t open for a few years yet.

The national funding crisis began when the government changed the law in 2014, making councils legally responsible for providing SEND support for children, but did not give them the extra cash to pay for that support. This often leads to expensive legal battles with parents over what support their child needs. Many councils are now in the same perilous position as Bristol.

The council is trying to make mainstream schools “more inclusive”, so they can support more SEND pupils, and increase the number of specialist places within Bristol. Since the new government was elected, the council hasn’t been informed of any changes in SEND policy.

Hannah Woodhouse, executive director of children and education, said: “We’re waiting to hear from the new government what their position is on high needs funding and the Safety Valve. There’s no reason for us to think that anything will change dramatically, but they have said to us that they are reviewing it.”