How do LAs set top-up funding bands for schools?

The move in one line

Set top-up bands locally: group EHCP needs by type and complexity, attach a top-up value to each band above the £6,000 schools already contribute, and agree the framework with schools in advance. Top-up is Element 3 — the per-pupil money you pay above the first £6,000 of additional support a mainstream school funds from its own notional SEN budget. Banding is the tool you use to value and allocate that top-up. It is locally determined, not nationally set: the Department for Education leaves the levels to you, and many councils run a banded system that shows the range of top-up for a given type and complexity of need.

Build the bands on the cost of provision

A band is only defensible if its value reflects what the placement actually costs. Define each band by the provision it has to buy — adult support hours, specialist teaching, therapy input, equipment — not by a diagnostic label on its own. For each pupil, the top-up should be confirmed in writing at the earliest opportunity, and ideally before admission, based on evidence from the school about the cost of the provision the pupil needs. Agreeing provision and funding in advance is what makes the system workable where you place many pupils, because it replaces case-by-case haggling with a transparent default.

The legal ceiling a band can never cross

This is the line most LA finance pages skip. Where an EHC plan is maintained, the council must secure the special educational provision specified in it. That duty under section 42 of the Children and Families Act 2014 is absolute and non-delegable: there is no best-endeavours defence and no funding band that lawfully overrides it. Section F provision must be detailed, specific and normally quantified (SEND Code of Practice 2015, paragraph 9.69), and a band cannot stand in for that detail. A band caps your default funding offer, not the child’s entitlement. Where a pupil’s plan specifies provision that costs more than the band, you fund the provision, not the band. Banding is lawful as an internal allocation mechanism; it is unlawful the moment it is used to refuse or under-specify what Section F requires.

Make it transparent and consulted

A banding matrix that schools cannot see invites dispute. Publish the bands, the trigger criteria for each, and the values, and consult on the framework through your banded funding model and your Schools Forum. Keep one eye on the direction of travel: the Schools White Paper of February 2026 and the Education for All Bill propose narrowing EHCPs towards the most complex needs, with no changes before September 2030, while the DSG statutory override now runs to March 2028. The current law still governs your 2026 to 2027 framework.

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