What does exclusion coordination cost your authority?
One input that matters: how many placement cases you handle a year. The rest are conservative benchmarks you can adjust. Pricing is per case — £250 per exclusion case per year (minimum £18,000), plus £75 per SEND case per year (minimum £30,000) with the SEND placement module included.
Your inputs
Hours per case is the combined coordination time across the referring school, the local authority and the receiving centre over a case's whole journey: referral, panel prep, placement search, status chasing, reviews and reporting.
What manual coordination costs you today
£341,250
staff time, per year
What ReferRoute costs you
£67,500
exclusions licence £37,500 + SEND module £30,000
Net saving per year
£301,125
£5.46 back for every £1 spent
The one-line version: at 150 exclusion cases and 400 SEND placement cases a year, ReferRoute costs £67,500 and returns roughly £368,625 in staff time, avoided statutory risk and transport savings — a net saving of £301,125 a year, £5.46 back for every £1 spent, payback in 10 weeks.
Where the return comes from
Coordination time saved
£170,625
half of today's manual coordination cost, across exclusions and SEND placements
Statutory risk avoided
£33,000
fewer formal complaints: each costs £3,500+ to defend plus a £900+ LGO remedy
Transport saved
£165,000
projected transport cost visible on every placement option, across exclusions and SEND: 1 in 20 placed nearer home, saving £6,000/yr each — well below the £8,900 published average SEND transport cost per child
Payback
10 weeks
then the saving repeats every year
Deliberately not counted, and each potentially bigger than the headline: one avoided long-term unregistered AP placement is worth up to £90,000+ a year against a state-funded place (independent AP reaches £111,000 per child per year); SEND tribunal exposure (councils lost £153m on appeals in 2024 at a 1.3% success rate); weeks of education recovered sooner per child; and the transport line above only books the floor — a placement made five miles from home instead of twenty-five is a £40,000–£100,000 a year difference, locked in for years. The headline stays conservative; those are the upside.
Price breakdown
Exclusions licence
£250 per case per year, minimum £18,000. Includes UK hosting, all core modules, unlimited school and provider accounts, and up to 25 local authority users.
£37,500 / year
SEND placement module
£75 per SEND case per year, minimum £30,000. EHCP placement moves, Section 19 and EBSA pathways, the capacity and commissioning register, transport cost at the point of decision, the placement decision record and suitability over time.
£30,000 / year
2-year contract rate
Commit for two years and the licence drops 10%, with the price locked for the full term — £13,500 saved over the contract.
£60,750 / year
Implementation
Setup and configuration for your authority, migration of open cases, building your provider directory, training for LA staff, schools and providers, and hands-on go-live support for the first 30 days.
£4,500 one-off
Support & maintenance
UK business-hours support with next-business-day response, all product updates and new features, security patches and monitoring.
£3,000 / year
Additional LA users
Beyond the 25 included local authority users. School and provider accounts are always unlimited and free.
£150 / user / year
Product change requests
Custom reports, extra fields, workflow changes specific to your authority. Scoped and quoted before any work starts; minor tweaks are handled free under support.
from £750 per request
Year 1 total
£75,000
licence + implementation + support
Year 2 onwards
£70,500 / year
licence + support
On a 2-year contract
£63,750 / year
licence (10% off) + support
What the SEND placement module adds
Every out-of-mainstream journey on one platform: EHCP placement moves, Section 19 medical and EBSA pathways, live capacity across special and alternative provision, projected transport cost at the point of the placement decision, a defensible decision record per placement, and suitability of placement over time with review history and cost-drift flags.
Also deliberately not counted: placement cost drift caught early — the suitability view flags any placement running more than 10% over the agreed cost; SEND tribunal exposure (councils spent £153m on appeals in 2024 and won 1.3% of them — a defensible, auditable placement rationale per child changes that position); and the out-of-area swing, where a placement made near home instead of out of county is tens of thousands a year, locked in for years. A defensible decision record per placement is also evidence for SEND reform plans and High Needs Stability Grant conditions, not just admin.
See ReferRoute running on your borough's data
Book a 20-minute demo. We'll walk through the pipeline, the PRU/AP capacity view, and show how quickly a referral lands with the right provider.
Estimates only, and deliberately conservative: the saving rate, drift rate and remedy figures all sit at the bottom of their published ranges. Full methodology and sources are documented in our research pack — available on request.