For local authorities, schools, PRUs and alternative provision
A child is excluded. The statutory clock starts. The system managing it is email.
ReferRoute puts every exclusion and SEND placement on one shared record: live capacity, statutory clocks in the open, transport cost before the decision, and an audit trail that cannot be edited after the fact.
Day 6
statutory duty to arrange alternative provision after a permanent exclusion
638,700
EHC plans in England, up 10.8% in a year
£2.6bn
spent on home-to-school transport in 2024/25
£153m
spent by councils on SEND appeals in 2024, winning 1.3%
The problem
The coordination tax on every placement
Referrals live in inboxes. Capacity is found by ringing round. Statutory deadlines are invisible until missed. And the money follows the chaos: transport agreed after the placement instead of shaping it, costs drifting above what the panel signed off, every complaint costing thousands to defend. Nobody's fault. The absence of a system.
The platform
One shared record, from referral to review
Six-stage pipeline
Every case on a defined journey from referral to review. Nothing sits in an inbox.
Live capacity board
Vacancies across PRUs, AP and special settings, updated by the providers themselves.
Statutory clocks in the open
Deadlines count down on every case. Breaches flagged before they happen.
Transport cost at decision
Projected transport cost on every option, before the placement is made.
An audit trail that cannot be edited
Who did what, when, stamped and immutable. The record answers for itself.
Safeguarding in the gate
DSL confirmation required to refer. Documents travel with the case, never by email.
The SEND placement module
The same discipline, applied to your biggest budget line
- EHCP moves, Section 19 medical and EBSA, each on its own pipeline with statutory clocks
- Live capacity and commissioning register across special, AP and independent settings
- Transport cost against every option, before the decision
- A defensible decision record for panels, tribunals and reform-plan scrutiny
- Suitability over time: review history, attendance trend and cost drift flags per placement
With high-needs deficits past £5bn and funding now conditional on evidenced placement decisions, the system that produces that evidence is the business case.
The numbers
Deliberately conservative. Still not close.
A worked example: 150 exclusion cases and 400 SEND placement cases a year, every assumption at the bottom of its published range.
£67,500
ReferRoute licence, per year
£369,000
returned in staff time, avoided risk and transport, per year
10 weeks
to payback, then it repeats every year
Security and data protection
Built for the DPO's questions
UK hosting, end to end
London region. No data leaves the UK.
You stay the controller
Workloft is the processor, ICO registered. DPA ready for your DPO.
Immutable audit trail
Every change stamped with who, what and when. Unchangeable after the fact.
No training on your data
Ever. AI features are optional and off by default.
Safeguarding gates
DSL confirmation before submission. Access-controlled documents.
Role-based access
Who sees what is scoped with you at implementation.
Who builds this
Twenty years of engineering. Eleven years in the rooms where these decisions get made.
The education side
Designed with practitioners who have spent eleven years in SEMH, PRU and mainstream settings. Every screen exists because someone who has carried the caseload decided it should.
The technology side
Engineered by Workloft, a London consultancy with twenty years building production systems for the public sector and regulated industries. When an authority asks for a change, it ships in days, not next year's release.
See it running on a caseload like yours
Twenty minutes. Bring your hardest case.