NEW special needs units will be up and running in schools in West Somerset by January at the latest, Somerset Council has promised.

The units will be built in Knights Templar Community Church School, Watchet, and Dulverton Junior School to accommodate children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), helping them to experience a more mainstream education.

They will be a separate classroom and facilities within the school setting for children to be educated within a small specialist environment designed to meet their needs.

Each unit will accommodate between six and eight pupils, depending on the complexity of the children’s needs.

However, consultation with families on the proposed new units saw an extremely low response rate, with Watchet and two other schools yielding one comment between them.

But council SEND sufficiency manager Lewis Andrews said it was a positive because it demonstrated parents, staff, and local residents did not have any concerns or objections to the proposals.

The council also confirmed it was carrying out a feasibility study for another unit which could be built for a school in Minehead.

The improvements are being funded by the Department for Education (DfE) through its high needs provision capital allocation, which is paid to all local authorities to cover the cost of new specialist sites or expanding existing provision within a current site.

Somerset received about £8.4 million DfE funding for this purpose for the 2025/26 financial year.

The West Somerset SEND pupil units are among 15 which are being created at a cost of £16.8 million within existing schools across the county to help more SEND children to realise their educational potential.

The council has previously faced purchasing high-cost placements from schools in the independent and non-maintained sector because most of its special schools, autism bases, and SEND units are already full to capacity.