“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 Minister is wavering- and that growing political pressure is finally starting to bite. Pressure, including from her own back benches, is mounting fast. 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 in relation to SEND that the Committee recognises “the broken link between the powers local authorities hold and the responsibilities they are meant to discharge.”
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 it became inconvenient, difficult, or merely not preferred to follow.
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 Local Authorities 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.
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 — 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.
What emerges is not isolated mismanagement, but unethical, harmful, and unlawful conduct- embedded at scale.
Thematic Headlines
This document — already over 1,000 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 Local Authorities 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 which is adversarial, but the conduct they face from Local Authorities operating well outside of 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 consequence.
- 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. Local Authorities frequently ignore court directions, and face barring orders. Families describe how support is then slow-rolled or only partially implemented even after 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 appear 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 expertise, dedicated resource and legal enforceability means rationing by pressure, inconsistent outcomes, and, 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 LGSCO. They describe 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 child in 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’ — then failed to deliver the provision ordered. Panels mis-routed three times, evidence lost, emails unanswered. She is now agoraphobic, completely isolated, and every report says EOTAS, 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.”
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 legal process, and withholding provision unlawfully. 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 — one that 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.
Next Steps
Measure What Matters remains committed to expanding the national dataset and continuing to collect testimonies from across the country. Our forthcoming 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 this 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.”
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.
Measure What Matters
Measure what matters. 
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