We are hearing strong rumours that Katie Nolan has abruptly left Derby City Council. If you have been following our campaign, you will know her as the "SEND Change Manager" - the internal gatekeeper brought in to police parent complaints at Stage 2 and shield the department from accountability.

But what you might not know is that she wasn't even a standard council employee. She was operating on an "indirect contract" - a highly-paid temporary agency consultant brought in off the books specifically to implement ruthless changes to how our children are assessed.

If she has left, prepare yourselves: the Council is about to offer her up as a sacrificial lamb. They will try to tell the public that they have removed a "rogue manager" and fixed the problem.

Do not fall for it. A single temporary consultant does not independently build a secret £24 million algorithmic matrix.

The rot goes to the absolute top of the People Services Directorate. This was not a localized mistake; it was a calculated, imported strategy.

We have uncovered The Brent Playbook.

The executive leadership currently gatekeeping Derby’s SEND department is not a locally built team. They are a transplanted corporate syndicate who ran this exact same operation at the London Borough of Brent:

• Sharon Buckby (Derby’s Director of Learning, Inclusion and Skills) was the Head of Inclusion at Brent Council.
• Louise Bartos (Derby’s Head of SEND Sufficiency) was a Service Manager operating under Buckby at Brent.
• Katie Nolan (Derby's rumoured departing manager) was a "SEND Assurance Manager" at Brent, before being imported to Derby via an agency to enforce statutory compliance.

The Blueprint: What did they do in London?

In 2022, Brent Council was given a £1 million grant by the government to "Deliver Better Value" and manage their SEND deficit. They didn't spend it on clinical support or teachers. Instead, they took £421,000 of that grant and built a specialized executive hit squad specifically to execute financial gatekeeping.

Their explicit target? They audited 300 EHCP cases of highly vulnerable children under the age of 7. According to their own documented minutes, this audit was designed specifically to identify cases where "allocated support funding could be reduced".

The cruelty of this system is on the public record. In one sickening Local Government Ombudsman (LGSCO) ruling from this period, Brent Council unlawfully denied school transport to a disabled child with significant mobility issues. The council absurdly claimed there was "no evidence" of the child's limited mobility, and told the family the disabled child could simply catch a free public bus. Brent’s punishment for this? A pathetic £1,650 fine.

Derby is the Sequel: The Imported Playbook

Derby City Council’s executive leadership performed their due diligence. They knew exactly what this syndicate did in London, and they knew the devastation it caused. But facing a massive SEND deficit ahead of a corporate merger, the Council deliberately imported this team to do it all over again to our kids.

They systematically copy-pasted their London techniques into Derby:

• The "Shadow Matrix": In Brent, they moved away from funding exact clinical hours and replaced it with a "Banding Matrix" to artificially cap funding. In Derby, they rolled out the exact same mechanism - the "High Needs Matrix" - to algorithmically block funding regardless of a child's clinical need.
• Pre-Assessment Roadblocks: In Brent, they used triage teams to intercept and block EHC assessment applications. In Derby, they rewrote the rules to force mainstream schools to submit exhausting "costed provision maps," pushing the financial burden onto the schools to stall the legal process.
• Retroactive Auditing: Brent used "SEND Assurance" panels to strip provision. Derby now uses internal panels to retrospectively challenge school spending and enforce the Matrix.

And just like in Brent, the human cost of these imported techniques is already devastating. The LGSCO has started slamming Derby City Council with rulings that perfectly mirror the London fallout:

• LGO Decision 25 000 786: The Ombudsman severely censured Derby after their failures caused a disabled child to lose four entire terms of education (April 2024 to September 2025). The Council was ordered to pay compensation for the lost schooling and a "prolonged 17-month period" of severe trauma, frustration, and stress.
• LGO Decision 24 006 025 (Aug 2025): The Ombudsman lambasted Derby for failing their absolute legal duty to provide the support written in a child's EHCP (Section F). The LGO explicitly reminded Derby that this duty is "non-delegable" - meaning the Council cannot blame schools or their secret Matrix for their own illegal failures. 
• LGO Decision 24 023 086: This ruling perfectly exposes their delay tactics, documenting how the Council forced a parent to suffer systemic delays extending all the way from 2024 until a Tribunal finally forced the Council's hand in July 2025.

The "Cost of Doing Business"

These lost tribunals and Ombudsman rulings are not accidents. As our leaked internal emails prove, SEND managers explicitly instruct staff to "try our luck" at Tribunal. They deliberately push families into 9-to-12-month legal backlogs, fully knowing the Council possesses "no legal defence".

And the reality on the ground is even worse than the official statistics show. We know they routinely concede at the 11th hour right before the Tribunal hearing. They do this to massage the figures and avoid an official judgement against them, but the damage to the family - a year of extreme stress, legal costs, and a child left without support - is already done.

Why do they do it? Because the Ombudsman only ever issues tiny financial penalties - a mere slap on the wrist that means absolutely nothing to a council managing a £300 million budget.

Paying a £1,650 penalty and conceding a Tribunal case a year from now is significantly cheaper for their balance sheet than actually funding a disabled child's statutory provision today. They break the law because they have calculated that it saves them money. They treat our children's suffering, safety, and legal rights as simply the cost of doing business.

We will not let them scapegoat one temporary consultant. This is a systemic, top-down policy of legal attrition engineered by a transplanted executive team. We demand full accountability from Director Sharon Buckby, Head of SEND Louise Bartos, and the Council Executives who hired them.

The illegal funding Matrix must be repealed, and the "Brent Playbook" must be permanently dismantled before it destroys any more lives.

Please share this update, and keep up the pressure. They are starting to crack.