Fines for education failures approaching £1m

The total amount of fines paid by a council for repeated failures within its education service over the last two years is climbing towards £1m.

Surrey County Council's (SCC) fines have increased from £47,000 in 2020 to more than £500,000 last year.

The authority has paid almost £240,000 in fines in the first six months of this financial year, which could see it hit £1m in the past two years.

The council says the system doesn't work for families, schools or local authorities and has lobbied the government for changes, additional funding, and urgent reform.

The majority of fines relates to education services, with the largest individual payments arising from complaints about missed education or missed provision, reports show.

These are made when a child is unable to attend school because alternative support has not been provided, or where the provision agreed in an Educational Health Care Plan (EHCP) has not been put in place, said the Local Democracy Reporting Service.

Councillor Paul Follows, Liberal Democrat group leader at SCC, said the authority had been promising to fix children's services for years, but has had little to show for it so far.

Clare Curran, cabinet member for children, families and lifelong learning, said: "We are working hard to reduce spend on fines, which we know is higher than it should be."

She added that provision and support for children with additional needs was a systemic issue that councils up and down the country were "grappling" with.

She said the council had also been working to improve the service with £15m put into a "three-year multi-agency recovery plan" in 2023 which was "now showing clear performance improvements".

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