How do LAs build inclusive mainstream capacity?

Start here

LAs build inclusive mainstream capacity by signing a DfE written agreement, submitting a place-planning proposal for the £860m capital fund (2026), and using Experts at Hand to embed specialists in mainstream schools. The first move is the one that unlocks the money: councils in England must sign the Department for Education’s written agreement to prioritise more specialist places in mainstream settings. The DfE’s high needs provision capital allocations guidance sets a hard date for this: the memorandum of understanding must be signed and returned to capital.allocations@education.gov.uk by 29 May 2026 to draw down the £860m capital, with a grant-assurance data return due by 1 October 2026. That capital funds new and improved specialist places in mainstream — including SEN units and resourced provision. Future funding is conditional on signing, so the agreement is the gateway, not an optional extra.

Then flow workforce and funding into settings

Capital builds rooms; capacity is mostly people. The second step is to put the revenue funding to work where children are. Experts at Hand — the Local Authority SEND Transformation Fund, worth £429m in 2026-27 — pays for councils to provide advice and direct specialist support (educational psychology, specialist teachers, outreach, speech and language and occupational therapy) into early years, mainstream schools and colleges. The grant conditions are specific: spend at least 80% on direct delivery, no more than 10% on administration and 10% on transformation. Alongside it, the Inclusive Mainstream Fund flows over £500m a year for three years, with around £400m a year going to schools, which must publish an inclusion strategy by 31 December 2026.

Then plan places strategically

The third step is the strategic one the funding is meant to serve: place planning that grows inclusive provision close to home. Use the capital and the written agreement to commission SEN units and resourced provision across the area so that, as the DfE puts it, every child who needs an inclusion base can reach one — and to cut the long-distance travel and out-of-area independent placements that drive high-needs deficits. This is where building capacity stops being a funding line and becomes a sufficiency plan:

1. Sign and return the DfE written agreement (memorandum of understanding) by 29 May 2026, and submit the grant-assurance data return by 1 October 2026.
2. Commission Experts at Hand specialist support and pass the Inclusive Mainstream Fund to schools at the published rates.
3. Grow SEN units in mainstream schools and reduce reliance on out-of-area placements.

The duty-and-reform frame

Build under the law that exists today. A child or young person with an EHC plan must already be educated in a mainstream school unless that is against the parents’ or young person’s wishes or incompatible with the efficient education of others — and the council and school must show there are no reasonable steps to remove that incompatibility before relying on the exception (Children and Families Act 2014, section 33). Mainstream schools’ best-endeavours and graduated-approach duties sit in Chapter 6 of the SEND Code of Practice. The 2026 Schools White Paper Every child achieving and thriving, published on 23 February 2026, points towards a system ‘inclusive by design’, with a new Individual Support Plan duty and EHCPs narrowed to the most complex needs. But these are proposals: no structural change is expected before September 2030, and current EHC plans are protected. So you are building capacity now to make the existing mainstream right real, not delivering a reformed regime that does not yet exist.

This page is general information, not clinical or legal advice.