EXCLUSIVE: LibDem council deliberately delayed publication of damning report to avoid its failures of SEND children appearing before the local elections. DAVE BURTON reports how councillors and officials have broken confidentiality rules and tried to pass the buck
In denial: LibDem councillor Gemma Munday has tried to pass the buck for Sutton’s failed Ofsted/CQC report
Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission have finally, after several months’ delay, published its local area SEND Report into Sutton Council and the South West London Integrated Care Board.
It’s a fail.
The report, issued to Jonathan Williams, Sutton’s director of children’s services, begins: “Children and young people with SEND have variable experiences in Sutton. Furthermore, some children have considerably poor experiences.” SEND stands for special educational needs and disabilities.
Ofsted found “widespread and systemic failings” in the service, which was putting children at “risk of harm”. The council and the care board have been ordered to submit a “priority action plan” to address the multiple failures.
Areas for improvement include the failure to maintain a functioning parent-carer forum, a need to strengthen transition to adulthood, the way data is shared and used, and a need to “work together to ensure there is an equitable offer for all”.
It has taken six months to publish the report following a three-week inspection in January. Sutton Council received the draft report on February 23.
In March, the LibDem-controlled council and the care board launched a hopeless complaint against the draft report, a blatant delaying tactic that kicked publication of the agencies’ damning findings until after the local elections held last month.
Sutton Council then leaked some of Ofsted’s criticisms ahead of formal publication, breaching confidentiality, and making crass excuses for their failures.
It’s a fail: Sutton is criticised following the inspection for ‘widespread and systemic failings’
In response to the very serious findings of vulnerable children being at “risk of harm”, the council’s defence was that no child had actually been harmed due to its failures. So that’s alright then…
Sutton Council bleated that it was unfair to downgrade the council’s rating. And Sutton sought to pass the buck to the NHS.
A condition called dysphagia – the medical term for a serious and often dangerous condition where people have difficulty or discomfort in swallowing – was a major issue. Ofsted’s area for priority action concerns “mechanisms for identifying, understanding and mitigating risks jointly”, the report states. “The partnership should address this rapidly in relation to children and young people with dysphagia and take swift action to mitigate risk of harm.”
In charge: Sutton Council director Jonathan Williams
Children’s dysphagia assessments and intervention had unacceptable delays due to under-resourcing.
Ahead of last week’s meeting of the council’s people committee, which oversees the SEND service, the council published its own report, which revealed details of the then as-yet-unpublished Ofsted report. You can read the report in full in pdf format by clicking here.
This was the council getting their retaliation in first.
The council revealed that the draft report said there was a “serious risk of harm” to children due to dysphagia screening failures.
When they learned about the CQC criticism in the draft report, the council and the care board investigated and put in extra staff to deal with issues. They also concluded that the service required significant improvement.
Ahead of the committee meeting, Inside Sutton asked Ofsted if the council was breaking confidentiality by publishing its criticism. We were told that confidentiality must be maintained until the final report is issued. At the meeting, the discussion on the draft SEND report was, at the last minute, held in “exempt session” – in secret – despite the council having already published its own report.
At this point, the council still did not have the final report, so should not have been discussing it at all.
The final version of the report, released yesterday, shows that Ofsted disagreed with the complaints by Sutton Council and the care board. Its findings stand: “There are widespread and/or systemic failings leading to significant concerns about the experiences and outcomes of children and young people with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND), which the local area partnership must address urgently,” the report states.
That the care board and council were dismissive of the failures around dysphagia ought to be extremely concerning.
Dysphagia is a condition that can require urgent medical attention, causing coughing or choking when eating or drinking. Children often regurgitate food, often through their nose, and have a feeling that food is stuck in the throat or chest. It can cause weight loss, dehydration and chest infections.
It’s a serious condition that can cause death. Sutton’s SEND provision has failed to deal with it effectively.
Trivialised: Sutton broke confidentiality by referring to the Ofsted/CQC findings before publication, and sought to justify their conduct because – fortunately – no children were harmed as a consequence of their poor management
While the report noted some achievements in SEND provision, there were other areas for serious concern.
A previous Ofsted report in 2018 noted failures in the provision of Education, Health and Care Plans – ECHPs – with excessive waiting times and a disproportionate number of refusals to issue. Despite some improvement noted in a 2020 inspection, the situation has deteriorated once again.
“The process to agree to assess for an EHC plan takes longer than it should,” says Ofsted. “High numbers of [ECHP] assessments are being refused… children and young people do not receive timely assessment and support. This increases anxiety and pressure for some families.”
Even when an ECHP is granted, things do not always progress well, as the plans are not made available to all practitioners for implementation.
Another serious Ofsted concern is the lack of a functioning parent carer forum in Sutton. Parent carer forums are required to exist by law. In April 2024, the volunteers running the statutory forum resigned, having lost trust the council and Cognus, the council-owned company which provides the borough’s education support services. In a leaked email, Marian James, the then lead councillor for the people committee, nastily disparaged the forum.
This left a huge hole in parent-council communications and interaction. Ofsted has now instructed the council to re-establish a functioning forum.
Funding is a central problem in SEND provision, and Sutton’s budget is currently slipping by around £11million each year. The Labour government’s White Paper, published in February, Every Child Achieving and Thriving, proposes national reform of the SEND system. Sutton Council has submitted its own SEND reform plan as part of the consultation. A likely “parachute payment” of £20million is not yet guaranteed but may offset council deficits.
In a press release issued yesterday, Councillor Gemma Munday, the LibDems’ lead member for people, would not accept responsibility for her council’s failures.
“It’s important to know that the ‘widespread or systemic failings’ judgement is due to serious concerns about the long-term support the NHS provides for children with dysphagia (swallowing difficulties),” Munday wrote.
“Inspectors told us that, without this issue, Sutton’s SEND services would have been rated more positively.”
“More positively” doesn’t necessarily mean a satsifactory rating of “Good”, however.
In her statement, Munday – the wife of Carshalton and Wallington MP Bobby Dean – failed to address any of the four “areas for improvement” identified by Ofsted.
Apparently in complete denial of the Ofsted and CQC findings, Sutton Council also claimed in a press release that it “outperforms London and national councils in SEND”, following publication of Department of Education statistics around EHCP plans. “Sutton Council made 99.5% of its decisions on whether to assess a child within the six-week deadline,” the council said, patting itself on the back for doing what it is legally required to do.
The council’s twisted interpretation of its SEND provision only takes into account what happens to applications for assessment, not actual assessments. Sutton processes applications and then often decides very quickly not to agree to an EHCP assessment. This leaves the parents or carers forced to go through a formal appeal procedure. Almost three-quarters of appeals succeed at tribunal.
As Ofsted noted in its report, “the process to agree to assess for an EHC plan takes longer than it should”.
Read more: Sutton Council sacks Cognus MD over their SEND shambles
Read more: Dombey and chums forced to climbdown over gerrymandering
Read more: Sutton’s Simpson show can’t account for £2m SDEN subsidy
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In her day job, Councillor Munday is the Stories Lead for Save the Children. She’s the lead on “global storytelling with children, families and communities through film, photography, art and words. These stories drive media, fundraising and advocacy campaigns.” She’s also the “communications lead for child and youth participation – developing ethical storytelling and co-creation approaches.”
Would be good if she applied those skills to the needy Sutton SEND kids instead of denying anything bad happened to them because of council neglect
This really was silly of Sutton to mess around like this and whilst all organisations will seek to emphasise the positives of a bad report this isn’t the way to do it. It just makes them look shifty.
I did briefly work for the CQC and one of its predecessor bodies where once the draft report was written it was shared with the organisation for a 2 week fact check period.
This was to allow the organisation to do exactly that – check the facts of the report on the inspection before it received final sign off and publication.
It wasn’t an “argue that we’ve improved since the inspection so please rewrite the report ” period because the report is based on findings of when the inspection happened.
The time to complain that the inspection wasn’t carried out properly is at the time of the inspection not weeks later because you don’t like the result.