The SEND sector has been much discussed over recent months and the UK Government set out its aims to reform the SEND system in a white paper published in February. Concerns are increasing that the system is not delivering the support that children and young people with SEND need and that the system is coming under increasing financial and operational strain. Every year since 2014, the number of children in England holding an Education, Health and Care Plan has climbed, now standing at 638,700 — and state-funded specialist places simply haven't kept pace. Local authorities are under greater financial pressure, families are left waiting, and the gap between demand and supply keeps widening.
While the UK Government’s proposals are a starting point to address the system’s problems, many of the solutions they offer won’t come through until the middle of the next decade. In the meantime, the sector needs capital together with lenders willing to back the people building solutions on the ground.
That's the thinking behind Broadwood Capital's latest financing: a £19 million loan to fund three new special educational needs schools in Sevenoaks, Bristol and Coventry. The facility, provided to a sector specialist joint venture set up in 2024, will fund the acquisition, refurbishment and conversion of three former school sites into independent SEND provision. All three are expected to be up and running by early 2027, and the loan provides headroom to bring further schools into the portfolio as the platform grows.
Part of a Bigger Strategy
This is Broadwood’s latest step in a conviction-led move into what the firm calls "social infrastructure" — financing sectors where needs-based real estate requires private capital to meet underlying demand growth. The SEND portfolio financing follows Broadwood's first healthcare sector loan earlier in 2026 and sits alongside its ongoing commitment to financing care home construction through the Broadwood Later Living Sustainable Construction Finance Fund.
Broadwood has now funded 650 beds in later living, 360 SEND places, and a healthcare diagnostic centre — roughly £150 million of lending directed at the parts of the built environment that an ageing population, a strained education system and growing demand for healthcare provision actually require.
James Tarry, Broadwood's CIO, frames the SEND sector as a natural extension of that thesis: the firm's experience in operational real estate within care and healthcare translates directly into education, where the imbalance between supply and demand looks set to persist for some time. He also points to something that matters as much as the bricks and mortar — the borrower's ability to deliver high-quality provision at a cost that represents genuine value for the local authorities funding the places. That's the model Broadwood wants to keep backing: real social value, delivered efficiently.
Why It Matters
Founded in 2022 by Dan Smith, Broadwood was built to provide mid-sized, mid-term funding to property investors and developers, with a particular specialism in complex financings, development and alternative asset classes. The SEND loan illustrates clearly what that specialism looks like in practice: a facility structured around a sector that mainstream lenders often overlook, but where the social need — and the underlying real estate fundamentals — are hard to ignore.