Councils in England, facing a funding shortfall of more than half a billion pounds for educating children with special needs, are planning spending cuts and service reviews, according to figures compiled by the Observer.

Campaigners fear children could lose some of their support as local authorities try to clear yawning historical deficits, with government rules stopping them using other reserves to help to fund the special educational needs and disabilities (Send) system.

Figures covering 131 of England’s 151 “upper tier” local authorities show the combined forecast “overspend” on high needs budgets comes to £503m for the 2020-21 financial year.

The figures were obtained from freedom of information requests and council documents, and show forecasts made late in the financial year.

Surrey council confirmed it overspent its high needs budget by £35m in 2020-21, and is forecasting a further overspend of £24m in 2021-22. Kent forecast an overspend of £35.8m in 2020-21, and 14 other councils forecast overspends of £10m to £18m.

Cambridgeshire has a forecast deficit of £13.7m in 2020-21. It is planning to reduce top-up funding for Send children in mainstream schools, as well as launching a variety of reviews covering individual support packages. A council spokesperson said: “In addition to the continuing rise in the number of education, health and care plans (EHCPs) being allocated to those in need, we are seeing an increase in the complexity of need among our children and young people. Our funding allocation is not sufficient to adequately match the increase in demand.”

Nearly 150 authorities have forecast a combined budget shortfall of at least £3.2bn, the BBC found.

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has said the government “has got to recognise” the financial situation facing councils.

The government said it was working on a “comprehensive plan” for councils.

A BBC investigation found across the UK:

• At least five English councils warned they may meet the criteria to issue a section 114 notice at some point without more government support, declaring themselves effectively bankrupt
• They include some of the UK’s largest unitary authorities – Leeds, Wiltshire, Trafford, Tameside and Barnet
• Of 173 local authorities who responded to the BBC’s questions, 148 predicted a budget shortfall

At least 20 local authorities plan to hold an emergency or in-year budget

Lost business rates, council tax holidays and emergency payments for families whose incomes have disappeared have all hit upper tier councils’ income, at the same time as rising costs of adult care and providing protective equipment (PPE) for carers.

Some of those councils would also typically depend on tourism for large chunks of income, such as dividends from airports they own or parking fees from visitors.

RURAL bus services could soon be boosted by £588,000 given out from a government grant, though concerns about a quick turnaround to apply for the money have been raised.

Oxfordshire County Council was offered the £588,403 pot of money from the government’s one-year supported bus services fund in February.

The council’s cabinet member for the environment, Yvonne Constance, signed a letter to the government confirming OCC wanted to use the money to protect bus services in rural areas across Oxfordshire on Thursday.

According to the statement of intent letter sent to the government, the council will spend the money is three separate ways.

• £125,000 will be spent on improving supported bus services, including the 136 between RAF Benson and Wallingford, and new Sunday routes between Banbury and Chipping Norton, Watlington and Oxford, and Woodstock and Witney.
• £253,400 will be spent on restoring lost bus routes between Chipping Norton and Kingham station, Southmoor and Oxford, and Abingdon, Berinsfield and Cowley.
• £210,000 will extend current services including a service between Lambourn and Swindon, an evening service from Oxford to Banbury, and a new Sunday service from Wallingford to Henley.

The Government has been warned it faces a “rural revolution” as council taxpayers in parts of Yorkshire face bills of up to three times more than some of London’s most exclusive boroughs.

North Yorkshire County Council’s deputy leader Gareth Dadd told colleagues “we are now at the tipping point of acceptability over council tax”, as the authority pushed forward council tax increases with a “heavy heart”.

But Coun Dadd said: “This evidence will be paramount with Government lobbying. We are now at a tipping point of acceptability over council tax. Some may say this is a bit of a rural revolution.”

The council’s cabinet meeting heard the Government had created an additional budgeting headache by proposing local authorities be banned from using general funds to subsidise shortfalls in school funding without Secretary of State approval. Without extra funding, cash for children with special educational needs and disabilities would face a £12m shortfall over the next four years.

But Coun Dadd said the root cause of North Yorkshire’s difficulties centred on an unfair formula being used by the Government to calculate how much funding councils should receive.

He told members: “It cannot be right, as efficient as we are, for an average band D property council tax in North Yorkshire to be £1,544 and for a band D property in an average inner London borough to be £1,157, with some Westminster, for example, being £433 or £754 if you count the Greater London Authority. This inequality has been prevailing for decades under governments of all political colours.”

Half of all council-owned farms across England have been closed down, as campaigners say authorities could profit from selling their produce.

The farms, set up at the end of the 19th century to encourage young people into farming, are in “terminal decline”, according to the Campaign To Protect Rural England (CPRE).

Now, cash-strapped councils are shutting them down, losing over 15,000 acres of farmland in the last decade, with 60 per cent of this sold off in the last two years.

This is despite the fact campaigners argue that they have a “huge potential to generate income, provide an opportunity to promote innovative farming methods and deliver environmentally sustainable farming” as well as being carbon sinks, tackling the climate emergency. 

A new report from CPRE done in conjunction with the New Economics Foundation, Shared Assets and Who Owns England shows  more than 50 per cent of county farm estates have disappeared over the past 40 years.

Leaders of councils across northern England have called for “massive” increases in funding to deal with major incidents, as the Guardian learned that around 1,800 homes and businesses have been badly flooded in the region.

Dozens of weather warnings remain in place around the country, from Oxfordshire to Yorkshire and across the West Midlands, where more than 100 schools were forced to close on Thursday.

The mayor of the Sheffield city region, Dan Jarvis, described the flood-stricken village of Fishlake, near Doncaster, as having “the feel of a disaster movie”.

As flood-affected families braced for further downpours, the leaders of six councils demanded immediate and long-term financial support to recover from the devastation.

The leaders of councils in Doncaster, Rotherham, Sheffield, Barnsley, Bassetlaw and Kirklees warned of “considerable and lasting damage on a wide scale”, including to power plants and transport infrastructure, and called for funding increases to help them cope with future floods.

In the absence of detailed official figures, the Guardian contacted local authorities in all flood-affected areas and found that at least 1,758 properties had been flooded across Yorkshire, Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire.

The figure is more than double the official Environment Agency estimate of 830 properties flooded.

Five fully-equipped farms and two blocks of bare land have been put on the open market as part of Staffordshire County Council’s plans to sell off part of its estate.

The mixed-use livestock and dairy holdings and land lots are to be sold by informal tender through property consultant Bruton Knowles.

The council announced in February 2019 that 688ha across 16 holdings would be on offer – more than 20% of its total estate.

Affected farmers were given the opportunity to buy their tenanted holdings. To date, three sales have been agreed with tenants and negotiations are continuing.

Proposals for the seven properties launched by Bruton Knowles must be submitted by the end of November 2019.

More information can be found on the Staffordshire Farms website.

A further five farms are due to be sold by the consultant in early 2020.

The funding crisis in special needs education is deepening, with council overspends on support for children with conditions including autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder rising by 30% in just a year, the Observer can reveal.

Figures sourced under the Freedom of Information Act from 118 of the 151 local authorities in England show that councils are expecting to overspend their high needs block budgets by £288m in 2019-20 – up from £232m in 2018-19. When money raided from mainstream schools budgets is included, however, these figures rise to £315m in 2018-19 and nearly £410m this year – a rise of almost 30% in the space of 12 months.

The high needs block is government funding that supports children with higher cost needs. Children with moderate special needs are funded via mainstream schools budgets.

City and community farms across the country are being threatened with closure due to local authority cuts and increased competition for funding, leading to reduced opening hours and scaled back services. However, for many troubled teenagers the farms provide a vital lifeline.

“These places give kids an opportunity in life,” says Ryan Clements, an 18-year-old apprentice at Greenmeadow community farm in Cwmbran, south Wales. “If I hadn’t come here then I’d probably be sat in a jail cell somewhere. I would start fights with people at school for no apparent reason.”

Despite the important work it does, Greenmeadow is facing a £200,000 subsidy cut – just under a third of its budget – from Torfaen county borough council, which funds the farm. “Everybody knows the value the farm has to the community,” says a council spokesman. “No one wants it to close by any means. We’re not under any illusions about the challenge this service faces.”

The council’s budget has been cut by £60m since 2010 and it has to save an additional £25m before 2023. It is encouraging the farm to generate more income from the resources it has, but acknowledges that one of the farm’s main sources of income, school courses, are no longer in demand – due to education funding reductions – and there are no block bookings yet for next year. “It’s a vicious cycle,” the council spokesman concedes.

The Well-being of Future Generations Act came into force across Wales in 2016, putting the onus on public organisations to account for the impact their decisions have on economic, social, environmental and cultural wellbeing in their area. However, deep funding cuts have hampered attempts to uphold those principles.

Ministers have been accused of a “stitch-up” over proposals to redraw the funding formula for councils in a way critics say will redirect scarce cash from deprived inner cities to affluent Conservative-voting shires.

The proposed changes – which include the recommendation that grant allocations should no longer be weighted to reflect the higher costs of poverty and deprivation – come amid increasing concern over the sustainability of local authority finances.

Leaders of urban councils have written to ministers to complain that under the “grossly unfair and illogical” proposals, potentially tens of millions of pounds would be switched to rural and suburban council areas.

Labour-run areas suffer Tory cuts the most. It’s an ignored national scandal.

Cllr Richard Watts, the leader of Islington council in London and chair of Labour’s local government resources group, said: “The evidence used by the government to justify these changes seems so bizarrely selective that it’s impossible to avoid the conclusion that the review is a brutal political stitch-up aimed at sparing Tory councils and Tory voters from more cuts while piling misery on the most deprived areas of the country.”

Northern cities and metropolitan councils see the so-called fair funding review of local government revenue grant funding as an attempt by ministers to prop up financially struggling authorities and declining services in Tory heartlands. An estimated 76% of Conservative MPs represent constituencies covered by county councils.

The financial collapse of Northamptonshire county council a year ago – and well-publicised difficulties faced by other Tory-run counties such as Somerset and East Sussex – have focused attention on the impact of austerity cuts to local services such as libraries, parks and Sure Start centres in even relatively affluent areas.

Details of the proposed changes were contained in a consultation released by the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government just before Christmas. The ministry has insisted the review is a technical exercise designed to simplify grant distribution among English councils and will make the process more transparent.