The government’s Send financial rescue package will only provide temporary relief without wider changes, councils have said as they submit reform plans.

When the government announced reforms earlier this year it said 90% of councils’ special education needs and disabilities (Send) deficits up to 2025-25 would be written off. But in return councils needed to submit their own reform plans by 19 June.

In these plans local authorities, integrated care boards (ICB) and schools are required to outline their universal offer agreements, provide evidence of their “effective partnerships,” co-production practices and describe their mediation practices.

According to a DfE briefing, these plans need to be signed off by the council chief, the ICB chief, the director of children’s services, the ICB NHS place director, and the section 151 officer as a “reflection of the joint statutory responsibilities for Send across the system”.

If a local authority fails to meet this requirement, the education secretary “may reduce, suspend or withhold grant payments or require the repayment of the whole or any part of the grant monies paid”, according to the explanatory note on the government’s approach.

Norfolk CC said approval of its plan was “materially important to the financial sustainability of both” the authority and the “wider Send system”. However, it warned that clearing existing deficits would provide only “a temporary alleviation of the threat of severe financial difficulties” and that “substantial risks remain”.

The council said that, under current projections, its cumulative high needs deficit would rise above £200m over 2026-27 and 2027-28, recreating “a very substantial risk to the Norfolk position”.

It also warned that delaying government approval of reform plans would have significant financial consequences.

“Given the scale of current overall deficit, even a six-month delay would have a multi-million-pound impact as a result,” the plan said.

Norfolk added that it continued to “urge government to provide clarity” over how future high needs deficits would be addressed.

Concerns about the sector’s ability to deliver reforms also feature prominently in several submissions.

Wolverhampton City Council identified changes to NHS England, ICBs and commissioning arrangements as a “high” impact risk to implementation.

It also warned that “system capacity may be insufficient to deliver Send reforms at pace and consistently due to workforce recruitment and retention challenges”.

The council said reforms should be phased to align with workforce capacity and known pressure points.

York City Council similarly warned of financial and workforce constraints.

Its plan said the authority was “one of the lowest funded local authorities and school’s system in the country”, requiring a “relentless focus on prioritisation, collaboration and making best use of available resources”.

Among the risks identified was insufficient local capacity to deliver the proposed Expert at Hand model. The government announced £1.8bn funding across England for specialist professionals including speech and language therapists, occupational therapists, educational psychologists and specialist teachers.

York said it would work with the University of York and York St John University to strengthen the pipeline of speech and language therapists, but also called for additional government support, including a regional commissioning unit to coordinate placements and place planning.

Bournemouth, Christchurch & Poole Council, which has one of the country’s largest DSG deficits at £108m, welcomed the government’s intervention but acknowledged reforms would take time to reduce spending.

Cabinet member for children, young people, education and skills Richard Burton (Lib Dem) told LGC the authority’s low reserves had made the historic deficit “very difficult to manage” and welcomed ministers for “actually addressing or trying to address this”.

He said previous governments had left the issue “in the too difficult pile”. He said the process of producing the plan was a “helpful exercise” for Send teams that had spent recent years “treading water waiting for a strong steer from central government”.

“The Send system has been left in limbo and we need things to get changed,” he said. “Children are only children for a short period of time.”

However, Cllr Burton cautioned that investment in specialist provision, early intervention and supporting children closer to home was “not going to slash the budget overnight”.