Halton Council is planning to close several primary schools in Runcorn. This will affect hundreds of students, families and lead to job losses for hard working school staff. The reason for the closure is because of falling rolls and a lack of funding.

Halton currently spends a third of its higher needs budget (£10million) on placements in independent special schools out of borough, because there are not enough suitable special school places locally.

This is an opportunity to increase capacity of provision for special needs within our local schools. Halton could use the surplus space in our primary schools to build better specialist placements, which would allow more students with SEND to attend a local school and which would save money that is currently being spent on out of borough placements

We, the undersigned, call on Halton Borough Council:

• to pause and review the proposed closure or merger of Runcorn primary schools,
• to carry out a thorough review of SEND provision to investigate the possibilities for further developing inclusion and in-borough provision including SEND Hubs in schools,
• to lobby the government to address this crisis and fund our schools.