Chris Coghlan MP calls for the Education Secretary to directly intervene in Surrey County Council

I have written with Lib Dem MPs in Surrey to the Department for Education, stating how we have lost confidence in Surrey County Council and it's ability to deliver SEND services. We request the Secretary of State intervenes immediately

Re: Child protection, SEND and governance crisis at Surrey County Council

Dear Secretary of State,

Further to our meeting with you on 29th January we are writing to express our grave concerns about the performance and governance of the Children, Families and Lifelong Learning Department (CFLL) at Surrey County Council, specifically:

Performance:

1. Sara Sharif: as reported in the national media, there were fifteen missed opportunities by public authorities including CFLL over ten years to save her from murder by her father and stepmother. On 15th December 2024 the Executive Director of CFLL Rachell Wardell OBE stated; “the perpetrators went to extreme lengths to conceal the truth from everyone”. From what we know so far, we reject the narrative that Sara and her family were ‘unknown’ or ‘lost’ to the system - published details of the circumstances of this family evidence that this is demonstrably untrue. It appears that immediate intervention is warranted, such as that necessitated in other incidences of serious institutional failure, to ensure no further children remain at risk. A Local Safeguarding Review alone is wholly insufficient;

2. Jennifer Chalkley: Last year the Coroner found that the death by suicide of 17 year old autistic Jennifer Chalkley in 2021 was avoidable. The report details 81 pages of mistakes by multiple local agencies including CFLL and CAMHS;

3. Oskar Nash: The Coroner found that the death by suicide of 14 year old autistic Oskar Nash in 2020 was avoidable. The report details gross failures and significant missed opportunities by Surrey authorities involved in the care of Oskar Nash including CFLL. The parallels between these tragic and entirely preventable deaths, and the ongoing testimonies of our constituents, make it evident that lessons have not been learned;

4. 1,809 Surrey children were out of school with special educational needs and disabilities SEND for over a third of the time in 2023/24, with devasting consequences for their life chances. Furthermore, our constituents tell us that many of these same children are being denied any alternative education by Surrey County Council, in clear breach of their duties under Section 19 of the Education Act 1996. The scale of this local failure is so severe that the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman (LGSCO) required SCC to submit an action plan to prevent further breaches. Yet, testimony from our constituents makes it clear that poor practices continue, putting thousands of vulnerable children’s futures at risk.

5. Surrey County Council has had more breaches of statutory responsibilities relating to SEND children raised to the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman (LGSO) than any other in the country for more than two years. To illustrate the scale: in just one week of November 2024, the LGSCO ruled against Surrey County Council seven times for breaching their Section 19 obligations as outlined above. It is our concern that these are not isolated incidents - they appear to represent a systemic pattern of failures that continue unabated despite repeated warnings. 

Headteacher after headteacher has testified to us about the appalling state of SEND provision from CFLL, including not replying to emails from headteachers for up to three months, let alone parents, and that the lack of appropriate specialist SEND provision, and the denial of sufficient SEND support is disrupting the education of children in state education across Surrey.

Governance:

1. Surrey County Council did not disclose to its Council Scrutiny Committees for over 14 months that it had more breaches of statutory responsibilities relating to SEND children raised to the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman (LGSO) than any other in the country (Appendix 1). In scrutiny reports, instead of disclosing that Surrey had exponentially more SEND-related complaints escalated to the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman (LGSCO) than the national average, SCC omitted any information about the volume of their complaints as compared to other authorities. The true scale of their outlier performance was only disclosed after the six Surrey Liberal Democrat MPs publicly called them out (Appendix 2).

2. County Council Leader Tim Oliver OBE repeatedly claimed in writing to Surrey Liberal Democrat MPs that the council had in fact disclosed their complaint volumes compared against other local authorities during this 14-month period (Appendix 3). Yet, when challenged to show exactly which paragraph disclosed this, he claimed it was disclosed in a paragraph which actually contained no information about volumes. This is self-evidently miss-leading.

3. Appearing to reclassify complaints as “enquiries”: Surrey County Council claims that complaints performance has improved in the current year (Appendix 5). However, we have seen evidence that instead, SCC has been reclassifying formal complaints as “enquiries” (Appendix 3 contains four example emails demonstrating this), and worse – suggesting that if a resident persists with a complaint, this may delay their response.

4. Rising Appeals to SENDIST – Unlike complaints data, Registered SEND Tribunal (SENDIST) appeal volumes cannot be internally manipulated. The latest figures show that appeals by families against Surrey County Council’s SEND decisions have risen by nearly 60% year-on-year, indicating that the performance of this department continues to catastrophically deteriorate. This also indicates that improvements in EHCP timeliness are at the expense of the quality of EHCPs issued, and also, consequently, decisions made about provision requirements and placements. Families5. and headteachers alike have testified to us of EHCPs which are unfit for purpose- sometimes with the wrong child’s names, clearly copied and pasted from other EHCPs and behavioural characteristics unrelated to the child nominally referred to by the EHCP. Worse, decisions about provision increasingly appear to bear little relation to the evidence gathered from specialists during assessments leading to significant increases in appeals being registered and leaving children with wholly insufficient provision in the interim.

5. A leadership culture contemptuous of families in crisis: In a meeting which all Surrey MPs were invited to on 27th September 2024 County Council Chief Executive Terrence Herbert stated that “Surrey does not have a particular problem with SEND, the issue is that Surrey parents are particularly articulate. ” Deputy Leader Member for Children’s Services, Cllr. Maureen Attewell stated in a Cabinet meeting on 28th January 2025 that Surrey County Council should “… guard, actually guard against hearing only from more articulate parents, often with loud voices, or access to additional resources such as expensive legal representation.” The choice of language by both executive and elected leaders of the current administration of Surrey County Council implies a deeply troubling attitude—that the exceptional scale of catastrophic failure, complaints, legal challenges, and Ombudsman rulings by the CFLL Directorate in Surrey is not the result of systemic local failure, but rather the consequence of parents being 'too articulate’. It is in galling contrast to the lived experienced of hundreds of children and families in crisis detailed in points 2-5 in the performance section above.

Given the above, we have lost confidence in the leadership of Surrey County Council and its care of children. 

We have constituent children right now whose lives are at risk, including one 16 year old SEND child who has been hospitalised for 12 suicide attempts and whose desperate mother has had to take Surrey County Council to tribunal ten times to fight for the support that her children are legally entitled to. Yet we understand that in her case, Surrey County Council has still persisted in obstructing her access to essential provision for over two years.

We request that the Secretary of State now directly intervenes with whatever measures necessary to prevent the risk of any further harm to the children, young people and families of Surrey.

Regards,

Chris Coghlan MP - Dorking and Horley

Zoe Franklin MP - Guildford

Al Pinkerton MP - Surrey Heath

Will Forster MP - Woking

Monica Harding MP - Esher and Walton

Helen Maguire - Epsom and Ewell