Faced with apparently limitless obligations to disabled children and relentlessly rising expenditure, they are attempting to clear their hands of the budget for statements of special educational need by giving it to schools.

East Sussex is one authority planning to delegate such funds to school governors - a process which will for the first time identify a limited pot of money. Hampshire also plans to delegate much of its budget for special needs.

Financially driven moves to hold down the cost of helping disabled children are increasingly common and are provoking outrage from special needs campaigners, who have proved themselves ever more willing to go to law. This week they are fighting Hampshire in the High Court.

Local authorities are legally obliged to provide pupils with the extra help prescribed in a statement. The theory is that, if schools are given additional resources, then the need for statements and extra help will diminish.

The East Sussex plan, if successful, will mark a dramatic shift from the current position in which the council’s spending obligations seem limitless. If faced with legal attempts to make it pay extra for any individual, the council will be able to reply that it is powerless to help - because the money has been given away under the very tight rules of local management.

East Sussex is still waiting for approval from the Department for Education before it goes ahead with its scheme.

From April, a little more than Pounds 2 million will be divided among its schools according to separate formulae for: moderate learning difficulties; emotional and behavioural difficulties; and severe learning difficulties.

Only one fifth of the total funding will be related to the number of actual statements, and then it will be modified to support smaller schools.

At the same time, the local education authority will introduce new, stricter rules to determine who gets a statement. Should a school prove unable to meet the cost of a statement from its available funds, it will be required to go into deficit.

East Sussex accepts that the funding formula will produce winners and losers. There will be transitional arrangements to support those schools hardest hit.

The East Sussex plans appear to be consistent with the current Government emphasis on consistency of treatment within and between education authorities, and on a rapid response to children’s needs.

“The present system has too much of a bidding system within it, and all the pressures that that entails,” said assistant county education officer David Nelson.

He also says that giving the money to schools will bring economies of scale.

“Schools were saying that, if the whole emphasis is on individual statements, each with their protected amounts of money, thatthis is an inefficient use of resources.”