Purpose

In 2024 The Department for Education (DfE) released a capital investment bid opportunity to develop provisions for children with complex mental health needs and challenging behaviour either with a Deprivation of Liberty (DOLs) order or at risk of a DOLs. The proposal outlined in the bid must be for new provision with specific adaptations to increase the number of beds for children within this cohort. LCC submitted and was successful in their bid in 2025.

LCC’s bid submission requested a funding value of £1.4m and in line with the criteria of the bid, LCC is also required to match this funding of £1.4m, totalling a maximum of up to £2.8m potential spend. The bid has agreement of joint funding of the staffing team with the ICB.

This provision can deliver savings for the Council by preventing escalation and reducing the need for high cost external residential placements that do not effectively meet need.

Additionally, a capital business case has been discussed and agreed to develop an additional Meaningful Occupational Space on the site to support delivery of care, health and education at the residential provision.

We request three decisions be made as part of this process:

1.  To accept the DfE capital funding as per their grant Offer Letter received December 2025 valued at £1.4m and subsequent drawing down and spending of that funding in the ways outlined in the successful bid.

2.  To match the DfE capital funding with £1.4m of capital programme funding already identified in the proposed 2026/2027 fiscal year budget - upon approval of that budget at Full Council February 2026 - and subsequent draw down and spend in the ways outlined in the successful bid.

3.  To Inject the additional capital funding for C&F fiscal year 2025/26 of £836k to create the Meaningful Occupational Space and subsequent drawing down and spend.

Decision

Please see attached report.