What is the SEND and AP Improvement Plan?

The SEND and Alternative Provision Improvement Plan is the Department for Education's March 2023 policy reforming England's SEND and AP system, now being carried forward by the 2026 Schools White Paper. Its full title is SEND and alternative provision improvement plan: right support, right place, right time, published on 2 March 2023 as the government's response to the March 2022 SEND and alternative provision green paper. AP here means alternative provision, the education arranged for children who cannot attend a mainstream or special school.

What the 2023 Plan set out to do

The Plan's aim was a single, national SEND and AP system that works the same way wherever a family lives, replacing the wide local variation that the green paper described as failing children and draining confidence. To get there it promised new National Standards setting out what support should be available and who provides it, a Change Programme testing the reforms in a set of partnership areas before national rollout, and local SEND and AP partnerships producing evidence-based Local Area Inclusion Plans aligned to those standards. It also committed £2.6 billion of capital between 2022 and 2025 to fund new specialist and AP places. For local authorities, this is the framework the Change Programme and current inclusion-planning work still sit inside.

Why the 2026 White Paper changes the picture

Here is the qualifier most definitions of the Plan miss. The 2023 Plan remains the operational backdrop for delivery work already under way, but its policy direction has been overtaken. On 23 February 2026 the DfE published the Schools White Paper Every child achieving and thriving, which proposes a statutory Individual Support Plan duty on every school, nursery and college, and narrows new EHCPs to children with a Specialist Provision Package. An EHCP is an Education, Health and Care plan, the legal document that secures support for a child with the most complex needs. The Education for All Bill announced in the King's Speech on 13 May 2026 carries these proposals toward legislation, with a consultation live through 2026.

Timing is where an LA paper most often overclaims, so be precise. The White Paper confirms that no changes to EHCP support begin before September 2030, and children who already hold an EHCP keep it through the protected phase. So the honest line for a board paper is that the 2023 Plan is still the live framework for today's work, while the legislative direction of travel has moved on and the detail is not yet settled. None of this changes a child's current statutory rights under the SEND Code of Practice 2015.

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