If you’re a parent of a neurodiverse child, you already know the system is broken. You’ve probably spent months—or years—fighting for an assessment. You’ve filled in endless forms, begged for professional reports, and maybe even remortgaged your house to fund a private diagnosis because the NHS waiting list stretches into infinity.
So when Reform UK’s deputy leader Richard Tice stands up and declares there’s a “crisis of over-diagnosis,” you’d be forgiven for wondering what planet he’s living on.
The Reality on the Ground
Let’s start with what’s actually happening. Some children have faced waits of more than five years for autism assessments. Five years. That’s a child’s entire primary school experience spent without proper support because they’re stuck on a waiting list.
Demand for EHCPs has shot up by 12% in the past year alone, with some areas seeing a 58% increase since 2020. And here’s the thing—two-thirds of special schools are already full or over capacity. There simply aren’t enough places for the children who need them.
Meanwhile, local authorities have racked up high needs budget deficits estimated at £3.4 billion this year. It’s a genuine crisis. But Reform’s solution? Make it harder for children to get diagnosed and supported in the first place.
The “Over-Diagnosis” Myth
Tice claims we’re seeing a “crisis of over-diagnosis” which is “in the process of bankrupting many councils up and down the country.” He reckons we should “stop labelling people” and has even suggested that children without diagnoses are “starting to feel left out.”
Right. Because what every struggling child really needs is to feel like they’re missing out on a trendy diagnosis.
Here’s the reality check: More parents than ever are taking legal action to secure EHCPs for their children, and SEND tribunals are seeing record numbers of cases. Over 90% of appeals are won by parents.
Think about that for a moment. If councils were handing out diagnoses like sweets, they’d be winning these tribunal cases. Instead, parents are winning nine times out of ten. That’s not over-diagnosis—that’s systematic under-provision being exposed in court.
The National Autistic Society hasn’t minced words either. Joey Nettleton Burrows called Tice’s claims “couldn’t be further from the truth” and warned that “spreading these kinds of lies stigmatises autistic people and makes life harder for them and their families.”
Scrapping Annual Reviews: A Recipe for Neglect
One of Tice’s bright ideas is that councils should trial scrapping annual EHCP reviews in favour of key stage reviews. His reasoning? “Children don’t need an EHCP report every single year that might cost between two and four thousand pounds each one.”
So instead of checking in on a child’s needs every year, we’d do it once every two or three years at key stage transitions. What could possibly go wrong?
Well, quite a lot actually. The current system already fails to keep up with annual reviews. Reviews of children’s requirements are sometimes “many years” overdue, meaning the level of support provided is often not what they need. Educational providers have expressed exasperation at the wait for updated plans.
Children’s needs don’t conveniently pause between key stages. A child with ADHD might need completely different strategies at age 8 than they did at age 7. An autistic child might develop new anxieties or sensory needs as they grow. Stretching reviews out to every few years means children would be stuck with outdated, inappropriate support—assuming they get support at all.
And let’s not forget: children’s circumstances often worsen while they wait for assessments. Imagine extending those waits by design.
Taking Away School Transport
Tice has also suggested it’s “not unreasonable” to review home-to-school transport policies. He wants trials where councils would “not allow taxis to take those children to school” because apparently “children are better off being taken to school by their parents, or with friends.”
This might sound reasonable if you’ve never actually dealt with the SEND system. But here’s what Tice seems to have missed: children aren’t being driven to school in taxis because their parents are lazy. They’re being driven because there’s no appropriate school anywhere near them.
Such is the shortage of special needs provision that families have to travel hundreds of miles every week to and from school, as there is no suitable provision in their local authority area.
What happens when you remove transport for these families? Parents—usually mums—have to give up their jobs. Families without cars can’t access specialist placements at all. Lower-income families get priced out entirely. And more children end up without any education because they simply can’t get to a school that can meet their needs.
The transport exists because a lack of special schools means more children have to be placed out of area. Fix the shortage of places, and you’ll naturally reduce transport costs. But that would require actually investing in provision, which isn’t quite as headline-grabbing as “scrapping taxis.”
Ear Defenders Are “Insane”?
This one genuinely made my jaw drop. Tice told a Reform event that “the sight of children in classes wearing ear defenders – I’m sorry, this is just insane. It’s got to stop. The teachers want it to stop.”
Ear defenders. Those cheap, simple, incredibly effective tools that help children with sensory processing differences stay in mainstream classrooms. The things that mean a child can actually concentrate on learning instead of being overwhelmed by the noise of 30 other children.
Taking away ear defenders wouldn’t save money—it would cost more. Without basic accommodations, more children would need specialist placements. The very expensive specialist placements that Tice claims he wants to reduce spending on.
It’s almost impressive how thoroughly this manages to be both cruel and economically illiterate at the same time.
“Just Trust the Teachers”
Tice’s grand vision is to move towards “a much more schools based, teachers based, trusted approach” because the system “doesn’t need therapists and psychologists writing so many reports.”
Teachers are wonderful. But they’re not trained to diagnose autism, ADHD, dyslexia, or any other condition. They can’t prescribe interventions or write legally robust EHCPs. And frankly, they’re already drowning in workload without being asked to take on the roles of educational psychologists, speech therapists, and occupational therapists as well.
The actual problem is that there’s a national shortage of educational psychologists, which has caused significant delays in producing EHCPs. We need more professionals, not fewer. Dumping everything onto teachers isn’t a solution—it’s an abdication.
The Real Cost Crisis
Here’s what’s actually driving up SEND costs. At 29 councils, spending on independent schools for pupils with SEND has more than doubled since 2020-21. Councils across England have spent more than £3.7 billion on sending children with SEND to private schools over the last three years.
Why? Because councils have not been able to open new specialist provision easily to meet demand. Of the 179 approved free schools waiting to open, more than a third are special schools, with six waiting more than eight years.
The numbers tell the story: placements in independent special schools cost an average of £61,500 per year compared with £24,000 in state-funded special schools. Councils aren’t choosing expensive private provision because they enjoy wasting money. They’re doing it because there aren’t enough state places.
The solution is blindingly obvious: build more state special schools, train more educational psychologists, invest in early intervention. Instead, Reform wants to make it harder for children to access diagnosis and support—which won’t reduce need, it’ll just shift the costs onto families and store up worse outcomes down the line.
What This Means for Families
If you’re currently battling the system for your child, Reform’s proposals would make everything worse. Longer waits for reviews that actually reflect your child’s needs. Less professional input into EHCPs. Potentially losing the transport that gets your child to the only appropriate school within reach. And a political party telling you that your child’s ear defenders are “insane” and their diagnosis is probably just a label they don’t need.
For families already waiting years for assessments, facing councils that reject nearly half of requests, these proposals aren’t reform. They’re abandonment dressed up as efficiency.
The SEND system desperately needs fixing. But the answer isn’t to gaslight parents, dismiss children’s needs as over-diagnosis, and strip away the meagre support that currently exists. It’s to actually invest in the provision that children need and parents are fighting so hard to access.
Reform UK’s proposals would save money in the short term by denying children support. The long-term costs—in failed education, mental health crises, lost potential, and family breakdown—would be incalculable.
Our neurodiverse children deserve better. Much, much better.
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