This is money a council pays schools upfront to reserve places for children with special educational needs, regardless of exactly which children fill them — like paying to keep seats available. It matters because it is part of the total cost of special-needs support but is recorded separately from the other spending lines, so it is easy to miss. A high number means the council funds many reserved specialist places; a low number means it funds few.
| name | hn_place_funding |
|---|---|
| dataset | 05-dsg-send-deficits |
| kind | extracted |
| type | numeric |
| unit | GBP |
| grain | local authority x financial year |
| role | feature |
| source | data/data/s251_alleducation_la_regional_national.csv (cp1252); geographic_level == 'Local authority'; category_of_expenditure == '1.0.2 High needs place funding within Individual Schools Budget'; column net_expenditure |
| period | 2015-16 to 2024-25 |
| missingness | 'x' = not applicable, 'z' = suppressed — never treat as zero |
| score_note | Raw funding component needed only to build the high-needs total. |
| peer_group | council class (district / county / unitary / metropolitan / London) — not yet scored on the leaderboard |
High-needs place funding delegated inside the Individual Schools Budget. It sits outside the 1.2. block, so it must be added to the 1.2. lines when constructing hn_expenditure_total — the file has no pre-computed total high needs line.