What is a section 75 agreement in SEND?

The definition

A section 75 agreement is a partnership under the NHS Act 2006 that lets a council and NHS bodies pool budgets or delegate functions. In SEND it is used to jointly commission education, health and care provision. The power sits in section 75 of the National Health Service Act 2006, which lets an NHS body and a local authority either run a pooled fund that both contribute to, or hand a defined health-related function to one of them to lead on. Neither body loses its own legal responsibility for its statutory functions by signing one.

What it is, and what it is not

It helps to be precise about scope, because this is where most summaries slip.

It is a funding and delegation vehicle: a written agreement that pools money, or names a lead commissioner, so two bodies can buy or run a service together.
It is not a SEND-specific term. Section 75 comes from NHS legislation and is used far more widely than SEND, including for the Better Care Fund and learning disability and autism services.
It does not create the duty to co-operate or to commission jointly. That duty has its own source (see below). A section 75 agreement is one way to deliver the duty, not the thing that creates it.

Where it sits in SEND law

The duty a section 75 agreement is often used to meet is the joint commissioning duty in section 26 of the Children and Families Act 2014. That duty requires a council and its partner commissioning bodies to put joint arrangements in place for the education, health and care provision secured for children and young people with SEN or disabilities. Chapter 3 of the SEND Code of Practice expands on this and points to pooled-budget arrangements under the NHS Act as one route to plan and secure that provision together. So the chain runs: section 26 sets the duty; chapter 3 explains it; a section 75 agreement is one of the legal mechanisms that delivers it.

One concrete example. A council and its Integrated Care Board agree a pooled budget for the therapies named in local EHC plans, such as speech and language therapy and occupational therapy, so that the health and education contributions are commissioned from a single pot rather than argued over plan by plan. The agreement can also sit underneath a personal budget in an EHCP, where a personal health budget feeds into the wider EHCP personal budget.

The detail that dates a draft

Since 1 July 2022, under the Health and Care Act 2022, the NHS partner to a section 75 agreement is the Integrated Care Board (ICB), not a Clinical Commissioning Group. CCGs were abolished on that date. Any older section 75 agreement that still names a CCG should have been novated, meaning transferred, to the ICB. If you are auditing or refreshing an arrangement and the paperwork still reads CCG, that is the first thing to correct.

Why the distinction matters

Treating the section 75 agreement as the source of the SEND duty is the common error, and it matters in an audit. The duty to commission jointly stands whether or not a section 75 agreement exists. If the agreement lapses, is poorly drafted, or has not been novated to the ICB, the duty in section 26 is unaffected. The agreement is the plumbing; the duty is the obligation the plumbing serves.

See also what joint commissioning for SEND is and how councils commission the therapies named in EHCPs.