Success Stories

Lambeth Council: Strategic SEND Forecasting and Transport Analysis

What was Lambeth Council’s challenge

Like many local authorities across England, Lambeth Council faced an ever growing cohort of young people with SEND, with rising numbers of pupils issued with education, health and care plans (EHCPs) being placed in expensive independent provision or out of borough school placements. In order to better plan their SEND service and ensure adequate local provision, Lambeth needed a clearer idea of the projected growth in the cohort, both in terms of age groups and SEND need.

What we did

We built on our work to develop the Wandsworth Mime Cohort Modelling Tool, which had been established and tested over several years. Using this approach, we were able to produce a robust forecast for Lambeth’s EHCP cohort over the next 15 years. The projected numbers were then combined with current placement costs, and intelligence about existing and future capacity to produce a robust projection of the “unmitigated” scenario. The modelling tool then allowed Lambeth to tweak underlying assumptions about the EHCP assessment requests, processes, placement practices, and plan a “mitigated” projected scenario.

Alongside this, we also produced analysis of the spend both on placements for young people with an EHCP and on the transport (taxi and bus) to get them to those placements. We produced a report to help Lambeth understand the overall cost of different types of placements, informing future scenario planning. This work also included producing an interactive transport planning tool in Tableau, which mapped all pick-up and drop-off points, and outlining several opportunities for combining multiple taxi routes into one.

The impact of our work

This analysis provided Lambeth with a much clearer understanding of their future EHCP cohort, and therefore supported them to:

  1. Develop robust plans for responsive and sufficient provision across the borough, and easily produce the required data for their School Capacity (SCAP) data return
  2. Compare future need to existing and planned provision to identify potential future gaps
  3. Inform financial planning and drive decisions around capital investment in specialist provision
  4. Understand implications of the growing cohort for placement funding and model scenarios to identify opportunities for efficiency savings
  5. Identify potential placement and transport cost savings