Guidance

High needs provision capital allocations: explanatory note

Updated 25 March 2026

Applies to England

High needs provision capital allocations (HNPCA) is paid to local authorities to support the provision of places for children and young people (CYP) with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) and those pupils requiring alternative provision (AP).

Of the available funding:

• 50% is distributed in proportion to local authorities’ population (as determined by the school census)
• the remaining 50% is distributed in proportion to local authorities’ population, weighted to reflect their pupil to capacity ratio for pupils in specialist provision

2023 marked the first year in which the school capacity survey (SCAP) data collection was expanded to include special schools. Using this data return again in 2025, we have determined an estimate of the total pupil to capacity ratio in each local authority by dividing the number of pupils with an Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP) in a specialist place by the specialist capacity.

This methodology is specific to allocations published on 25 March 2026 for financial year 2026 to 2027, and this explanatory note should not be taken as an indication of any future methodology or approach to high needs capital funding.

Allocations for financial year 2026 to 2027

On 25 March 2026, DfE published £860 million of HNPCA for financial year 2026 to 2027. This funding is to support local authorities to deliver new places for academic year 2027 to 2028 and to improve existing provision for CYP with SEND or who require AP.

The funding can be used to adapt classrooms to be more accessible for children with SEND, to create specialist facilities within mainstream schools that can deliver more intensive support adapted to suit the pupil’s needs, and to create special school places for pupils with the most complex needs.

To calculate the distribution of the funding across local authorities, we use a combination of estimated total pupil to capacity ratio and population size.

Estimating population size

Using the January 2025 school census, we sum the total number of pupils from year reception to year 11 inclusive to give us a comparable population size for each local authority.

Estimating a total pupil to capacity ratio in high needs provision

We use 2 data sources to estimate the total pupil to capacity ratio in each local authority:

• the number of CYP currently educated in specialist places is taken from the 2025 Special Educational Needs survey (SEN2) where CYP aged 4 to 19 inclusive and attending a special school, SEN unit or resourced provision within mainstream schools or AP or pupil referral unit (PRU)
• the capacity of special schools and SEN units or resourced provision within mainstream as reported in SCAP 2025

For each local authority we divide the SEN2 total by the capacity total to give the ratio of pupils capacity.

Calculating the ‘population’ component

For each local authority we weight the population by the appropriate location factor. We then calculate the England weighted population.

For each local authority their total population component is:

• Weighted local authority population / Weighted England population x £430 million

Calculating the capacity component

For each local authority we take the location weighted population from step 3 and weight according to the pupils capacity ratio calculated in step 2.

The ratios are spilt into quartiles, where the weightings in each quartile are set as follows:

• 1 for the smallest ratios
• 2 for the next smallest group
• 3 for the next smallest group
• 4 for the group of largest ratios

We sum the ratio weighted population to get the England total. For each local authority their total capacity component is:

• Ratio weighted local authority population / Ratio weighted England population x £430 million

Special and alternative provision AP free school alternative place grant

Only local authorities who had a special or AP free school project in the pipeline were eligible for this funding. Local authorities will have received communication about this in December 2025. This is a one-off grant to be paid over two years (2026 to 2027 and 2027 to 2028), directly to local authorities.

Data used includes pupil numbers from the published list of free schools in the pre-opening stage.

The average cost per place was calculated using data submitted by local authorities about how previous HNPCA grants have been spent.

The regional adjustment factor building cost information service (BCIS) for this is different to HNPCA and is based on previous years as the offer was first made to local authorities in December 2025.

The formula used to calculate this funding offer is as follows:  

• the expected number of places to be delivered by each project was multiplied by the average cost per place (£50,000)
• a regional adjustment factor (BCIS) was then applied to reach the final allocation

The total allocation was calculated using this formula, it has then been divided equally (50:50) over two financial years for payment.