Keir Mather MP provides welcome SEND school update

Selby MP Keir Mather has this month confirmed that the Government expects construction of the Selby SEND School to begin in a ‘matter of months’. This confirmation follows from a campaign, spearheaded by Mr Mather since his election in 2023, to end the years of delay and provide inclusive SEN education to children across the Selby District. Mr Mather described the confirmation, provided in a letter from Schools Minister, Catherine McKinnell, as a ‘vital step in the right direction’, but stated the Government must now move ‘as quickly as possible to make this school a reality.’

Funding was initially allocated for the school in 2019, but years of delays and inflationary cost-pressures contributed to concerns that construction might never begin. The school also faced challenges from local political actors, with Councillors Andrew Lee (Conservative) and Mike Jordan (Reform UK), both criticising the location of the site.

In recent months, Mr Mather wrote to the Chief Secretary of the Treasury, Darren Jones, who led the government's Comprehensive Spending Review - a line-by-line review of all government expenditure. In the letter, Mr Mather emphasised that the school provides good value for money for taxpayers, going some way to cutting the local authority's enormous expenditure on sending children in buses or taxis to appropriate settings elsewhere in the region.

Last month, the Selby MP stepped up the pressure by publicly calling for the Department for Education to provide certainty about the timeframes for the school's delivery. In a public statement, Mr Mather said ‘I fought for it [the school] when the last government was in power, and I’ll keep doing so now.’

In a response, the Minister for School Standards said that she recognised the important role of the new school in alleviating some of the pressure on the local SEND system, and confirmed that the Department expects work to begin in summer 2025 for completion in 2027. Mr Mather said that he continues to meet with Departmental officials regularly and that he hopes to have further discussions with representatives of the Wellspring Academy Trust as they plan for the opening of the school.

More broadly, Mr Mather welcomed the government's significant investment in school's capital funding to assist mainstream schools in meeting the needs of children with special educational needs and disabilities. The Comprehensive Spending Review delivered £740m of this investment, and Mr Mather said that he was committed to making sure that Selby receives its fair share of this.

Keir added “I know that there were doubts and anxieties about the fate of the school, which are completely understandable given previous delays. It is no surprise at all that local SEND families are cautious about promises made by politicians, which is why I've worked tirelessly over the course of the past two years to make sure that this is a problem which no government can ignore. It is enormously welcome news that the Labour government is delivering where others had failed to do so, and I hope that this news will provide some much needed reassurance for families.”