Area SEND inspection of South
Gloucestershire Local Area
Partnership
A joint statement from South Gloucestershire Council and NHS Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire Integrated Care Board
The South Gloucestershire SEND Area Partnership was inspected in July 2025 by Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission (CQC), they published their report on 5 November 2025. They looked into the range of services delivered by the Council and NHS partners, working with children and their parents and carers, while considering data and also children’s experiences.
The outcome of the report is that: “The local area partnership’s arrangements lead to inconsistent experiences and outcomes for children and young people with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND). The local area partnership must work jointly to make improvements.”
The report recognises that a lot of the work we do with families and young people is effective and valued. The increasingly inclusive education system, supported by the cluster model and the Fair Access Panel is creating opportunities beyond statutory requirements. Early help services are providing agile, whole-family support, with practitioners offering intensive assistance and strong advocacy, which is something families value highly.
Waiting times for key therapies and mental health services have been significantly reduced, and most children with SEND are now educated close to home. These improvements, driven by strong partnership working, are accelerating early identification and delivering positive experiences and outcomes, particularly for families new to the system.
That said, we know we need to do significantly better to improve consistency in the way that support is provided, especially for those who are waiting on the neurodevelopmental pathway and for those young people with Social, Emotional, and Mental Health (SEMH) needs. We also need to broaden the availability of alternative provision and do more to work closely with children and families at operational and strategic levels to ensure we hear their voices well. We will need to ensure that our tracking of children who have specialist needs through the dynamic support register meets all requirements.
Where children’s needs are met early and consistently, they and their families have a positive experience of the system and achieve stronger outcomes. For families where experiences are not positive in working with us, we must improve.
We fully accept the report findings. The areas identified by inspectors for improvement were in our existing plans and we will redouble our efforts to drive the improvement work already underway.
We are putting in place additional detail to our plans, and making sure that these are overseen at the highest level, to ensure we have the right support to make rapid progress.
We are committed to making the experiences of all children consistently better – in partnership, through co-production and by valuing and hearing more loudly, our children’s voices. Together, we want to make a positive difference to the experiences and outcomes for all our SEND children and families.
The next full area SEND inspection will take place within approximately three years.
Read the full report on the Ofsted websiteSouth Gloucestershire Council and NHS Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire Integrated Care Board (NHS BNSSG ICB) are jointly responsible for the planning and commissioning of services for children and young people with SEND in South Gloucestershire.