What happened
Wings School at Whassett, Milnthorpe, was an independent residential special school for pupils with social, emotional and mental health needs, run by the Kedleston Group, with 39 pupils on roll.
On 27 June 2024 Ofsted carried out an emergency inspection without notice, commissioned by the Department for Education over concerns about pupils’ welfare, health and safety and leadership.
Inspectors found that some leaders and staff used restrictive physical intervention “as a strategy for discipline and compliance, not solely when pupils or staff are at risk of harm”. Practice was unsafe, with pupils “subject to excessive force and unsafe holds”. Children were injured by staff and by other pupils. Injuries and first aid were not systematically recorded, and communication with parents was poor, so parents were sometimes not told their child had been hurt.
Staff had been directed not to follow the school’s safeguarding and whistle-blowing procedures when they had serious concerns.
The outcome
Ofsted found the school did not meet the independent school standards on welfare, health and safety, on provision of information, and on leadership and management. It closed in July 2024, within weeks of the inspection.
Cumbria Police said in December 2024 that its major incident team was investigating allegations of abuse and trying to identify other potential victims. According to the BBC, more than 15 civil claims were being pursued against the Kedleston Group, covering 2003 to 2024 and mainly concerning excessive restraint.
No legal outcome has been concluded. Cumbria Police recorded 143 allegations, physical and sexual, at the school between January 2011 and August 2023.
What went wrong
Restraint was not reported, recorded or monitored. The school was not following its own policy. And some staff did not recognise that what they were doing was restrictive physical intervention at all.
If a member of staff does not classify their own action as restraint, the recording form stays blank, the monitoring system sees nothing, and the practice continues in plain sight. Ofsted found staff did not routinely check whether pupils had been injured or needed first aid.
Underneath it is a leadership finding. Staff were told not to use the safeguarding and whistle-blowing procedures, and leaders did not intervene to challenge colleagues’ harmful behaviour towards pupils.
What it teaches
The definitional gap is what a trainer is fighting. Most services can teach a hold. Fewer can get a whole staff body to agree where the hold begins, and to record the small ones.
A whistle-blowing procedure that staff are told not to use is worse than none. It looks like a control while removing the only route out.
Questions for the room
- Ofsted wrote that staff did not recognise some of their actions as restrictive physical intervention. Which of your everyday moves would a colleague call restraint?
- You are a teacher and a pupil will not leave the room. Where is the line between discipline and restraint, and who else needs to know you crossed it?
- Staff were told not to use safeguarding and whistle-blowing procedures. What does that say about the manager’s role here?
Evidence and limits
Confidence: confirmed. Ofsted’s inspection report was read in full and is quoted directly, and BBC reporting corroborates the closure, the police investigation and the civil claims.
Two things are unsettled. The police investigation was continuing and the civil claims were unresolved when this page was written, so nothing here is a concluded finding against any person.
The sources differ on the age range: Ofsted gives 10 to 17, the BBC nine to 17. The record follows nine to 17.
No pupil or member of staff is named.
Restraint reduction training for schools covers the definitional work, and what a school’s recording has to capture.
Sources
- Ofsted, school emergency inspection report, Wings School, Milnthorpe, 27 June 2024
- BBC News, “School abuse allegations ‘rising weekly'”, 21 December 2024
Reviewed 20 October 2026.