Supporting children, young people and families

We will build on the decision to bring Children's Services back in-house, invest in early help, fund after-school provision across the borough, and make sure every eligible child gets a free school meal.

We will also stop sending Reading's children in care further and further from home — 37% are now placed more than 20 miles away. We welcome the Council finally opening new in-house children's homes, but the job isn't done: Liberal Democrat-run Hull City Council shows what a fuller, community-based model can achieve, and we will keep pushing until every child who can be cared for close to home is.

We will also take seriously what Labour's own data shows but won't act on — that the attainment gap between disadvantaged children and their peers in Reading remains stubbornly wide. We will work with schools across the borough to close that gap, prioritising early intervention, stronger SEND support, and making sure no child's postcode determines their prospects.

Behind the figures is a funding crisis. Reading's dedicated schools grant high needs deficit reached £48.6 million by March 2026 — a hole the Government has only agreed to cover conditionally, and only temporarily. The Education for All Bill now proposes new duties on councils around SEND. We welcome the ambition, but new responsibilities without new money will make a difficult situation worse. Reading Liberal Democrats will push Government to fund what it mandates.

Liberal Democrat-run West Sussex County Council has already taken this fight national — securing coverage after school leaders warned they were reaching financial breaking point and wrote directly to MPs over an outdated National Funding Formula. We will add Reading's voice to that call, pressing the Government for a fairer funding formula alongside the extra money our schools need to meet SEND demand.

This isn't an abstract funding gap — many schools across the country are currently funded well below the national and regional averages per pupil, and heads say recent uplifts have been swallowed by rising energy costs, unfunded pay awards and soaring SEND provision costs. If Reading doesn't add its voice now, we risk the same slow-motion squeeze on our own schools' budgets.

This isn't a Reading problem in isolation. The Local Government Association's own analysis, published in July 2026, found councils across England face a £7 billion funding black hole by 2028/29 — cost pressures equivalent to 22% of current spending just to stand still, driven above all by children's services, SEND and adult social care demand. The LGA is now calling on Government for long-term reform of council funding, not more short-term bailouts and council tax rises. Reading's own funding crisis is the local face of a national one — which is exactly why Government must act on the funding formula, not leave councils to absorb it alone.