According to the statutory instrument published on legislation.gov.uk, the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026 (Establishment of Schools) (Consequential Amendments) Regulations 2026 were made on 16 July 2026 and are due to come into force on 1 September 2026, apart from one deferred amendment linked to a separate commencement provision. The draft instrument was approved by both Houses under section 73(4) of the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026 and signed by Georgia Gould, Minister of State at the Department for Education. The measure is labelled EDUCATION, ENGLAND, although regulation 1 states that it extends to England and Wales. Its function is narrower than the title may first suggest. It does not create a new school-establishment regime by itself, but amends older legislation so that it matches the framework introduced elsewhere in the 2026 Act.
The explanatory note states that the regulations are consequential on sections 65 to 69 of the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026, which amend the Education and Inspections Act 2006 in relation to the establishment of schools. In practical terms, the instrument removes outdated references, updates the titles of surviving provisions and brings pupil referral units into parts of the scheme where the drafting previously focused on maintained schools or academies. A clear pattern runs through the instrument. References to section 11 of the Education and Inspections Act 2006 are largely removed, references to section 10 are recast, and an older route in section 6A on seeking proposals for new academies is stripped out of later secondary legislation. For local authority legal teams and governance officers, the main effect is statutory alignment rather than a new policy direction.
Regulation 2 makes a small but necessary amendment to section 529(1A) of the Education Act 1996, which concerns the power to accept gifts on trust for educational purposes. The legislation.gov.uk text replaces the reference to sections 7, 10 and 11 of the 2006 Act with a reference to sections 7 and 10 only. Regulation 3 makes the more operational change. Section 129 of the Education Act 2002 on transfer of employment is amended so that subsection (5) expressly includes a pupil referral unit, while subsection (6)(a) is updated to refer to section 7 or section 10 rather than section 7 or section 11. That matters where staff transfers are linked to the creation or reorganisation of provision, because the statutory wording now catches pupil referral units directly.
Further alignment appears in regulation 4 and regulation 5. Regulation 4 amends section 11A(1) of the Education and Inspections Act 2006, but regulation 1(3) provides that this change will come into force only when section 7 of the Children, Schools and Families Act 2010 is commenced. The drafting is technical, but it shows the Department for Education is still managing how the 2006, 2010 and 2026 Acts fit together. Regulation 5 updates the School Governance (New Schools) (England) Regulations 2007. The statutory instrument removes the reference to section 11, keeps sections 7 and 10, and rewrites regulation 5(4) so that it works where one proposal has been published and at least one other proposal for a maintained school, an academy or a pupil referral unit has also been published. That is relevant where decision-makers are comparing competing proposals.
Pupil referral units are drawn more clearly into the procedural framework by regulation 6. A new paragraph 27A is inserted into Schedule 1 to the Education (Pupil Referral Units) (Application of Enactments) (England) Regulations 2007 so that regulation 5(1) of the 2007 New Schools Regulations applies to units as it does to maintained schools, and regulation 5(4) applies with modified wording. For bodies commissioning alternative provision, this is one of the more concrete features of the instrument. It means parts of the advance-governance arrangements used for new schools are now stated to apply to pupil referral units as well, reducing uncertainty over whether equivalent anticipatory steps can be taken before formal approval.
Regulation 7 then amends the Local Government (Structural Changes) (Further Transitional and Supplementary Provision and Miscellaneous Amendments) Regulations 2009. It removes the reference to section 6A of the 2006 Act, replaces the description of section 10 with its updated wording, and omits the reference to section 11. That confirms that the post-2026 school-establishment framework is intended to run consistently through related secondary legislation. Regulation 8 contains the protection for cases already under way. According to the instrument, the amendments in regulations 5, 6 and parts of 7 do not apply where proposals under section 11 were published before commencement but have not yet received a final determination. The same approach applies where a local authority had already sought academy proposals under section 6A and set a submission date before the new provisions took effect.
The practical effect is therefore twofold. From 1 September 2026, local authorities, trusts, governing bodies and advisers working on new school or pupil referral unit proposals will need to use the revised statutory references and the updated procedural route. At the same time, projects already in progress under section 11 or section 6A are preserved until determination, avoiding disruption to live cases. The explanatory note states that no full impact assessment has been prepared because no, or no significant, impact on the private, voluntary or public sector is foreseen. Even so, the instrument is not merely administrative. It resets the legal cross-references used in proposal notices, governance planning, employment transfer work and decision papers, and it does so only weeks before the 1 September 2026 commencement date.