An open dataset for the SEND local offer
The SEND directory, researched once and shared with every council
Every council in England must publish a SEND local offer. Keeping the directory behind it up to date is slow, careful work, and right now it is done separately by every one of them. This project does the research once, publishes it as open data, and lets any local offer pull it in.
In the dataset today
- Organisations
- 438
- Services
- 593
- Local authorities
- 7
- Schools, each linked to its own SEND page
- 72
Counted live from the site. Every record was checked against a real source before it was published.
Have a look around
This is a working directory as well as a dataset. Search it the way a parent carer or a SENCO would, and see what a council's local offer could show without doing the research itself.
By local authority
- Bradford (238)
- Calderdale (64)
- Wakefield (60)
- Leeds (48)
- Kirklees (42)
- Essex (1)
- Hartlepool (1)
- National (all areas) (96)
The count is organisations. An organisation that genuinely serves more than one area appears in each, researched once.
How the data is made
The process is published, not just the result. An AI does the reading, a person makes every decision, and the decisions are on the record, including the ones that keep something out.
Why do it this way
Directory information about local services is public information. The services are run by councils, the NHS, charities, even the voluntary sector. So knowing they exist should be free for anyone to use. Yet every council collects the same information separately, in its own silo, and most of it goes stale between checks.
Ofsted already shows what this could look like. Registered childcare providers appear on council websites automatically because one central register holds them. There is no central register for the wider set of small, local organisations that matter to SEND families, so this project is trying to be one, in the open.
The shape of the data is not ours. Organisations, services and locations follow Open Referral UK, the standard that NHS social prescribing software already reads. That means a council's directory, a SENDIASS adviser's tool or a family hub can all pull the same record, but choosing specifically which services to include.
One more thing, since we spend our days reading them. Schools often publish their SEND information as PDFs. A PDF goes out of date the day it is exported, does not reflow on a phone, and often cannot be read by a screen reader at all. The families most likely to need that page are the ones a PDF shuts out. We've linked every school in this dataset to its own SEND page, and we would love to see more of those pages be HTML pages, not PDFs.
The thinking behind it
- Producing resource directory information as a public good, Open Referral's paper on why directory data belongs in the open, and three ways to sustain it (PDF)
- Open Referral UK, the data standard this follows, and who already reads it
- OpenActive, the standard for sessions and events, with a disability access workstream
- Good Services, why every service here is named as something a person can do
- Calderdale's local offer, where we started, because we built it
For councils
The plan is that a SEND local offer officer can search here for their area, download the result, and import it into their own directory in minutes rather than re-researching it. Here is what exists now and what is coming.
A researched directory for 7 areas so far
- 438 organisations and 593 services, each checked against its own website, with the areas it really covers.
- Every school with a link straight to its SEND information page, not just its home page.
- Services written in plain English as things a family can do, ready to publish as they are.
- A public record of what was left out and why, so your officer can disagree with a decision and say so.
Take it home with you
- Search your area and download the result as a CSV or JSON file, shaped to Open Referral UK, for import into your own local offer.
- Charities found through Companies House by area, and by whether they work locally, regionally or nationally, so one piece of research serves every council.
- A shared taxonomy, worked on with Open Referral, so the same record can appear in a SEND local offer, an adult services directory, children's services, kinship or care leavers, on your site and your neighbours'.
If you would want the download, tell us what format and fields your directory needs. That shapes what gets built first.
See the full roadmap, including the things we know are not right yet.
A note from Jonny
I run pop pop studio. We built Calderdale's local offer, and we know first hand how much time keeping a directory up to date takes. This site is our attempt to do that work once, in the open, so that no council has to do it alone.
It is early and fairly limited in scope. What I am hoping is that you can see what is possible from here: a directory that is more complete, and more up to date, for the young people, parent carers, and professionals who rely on it.
Pass this on to your SEND local offer officer, and tell me what you think. Good or bad, it all helps.