Summary: The Ombudsman will not investigate Mrs X’s complaint about the way the Council prepared an Education Health and Care Plan. The Tribunal is considering what the Education Health and Care Plan should say and until it has concluded we are not able to find out the injustice to Mrs X and her child.

The complaint

1. The complainant, whom I shall call Mrs X, complains about the way the Council prepared an Education Health and Care Plan and delays in the process. She says this means her child, B, has missed the education provision they need.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

2. SEND is a tribunal that considers special educational needs. (The Special Educational Needs and Disability Tribunal (‘SEND’))
3. We cannot investigate a complaint if someone has appealed to a tribunal. (Local Government Act 1974, section 26(6)(a), as amended)
4. We investigate complaints about ‘maladministration’ and ‘service failure’. In this statement, I have used the word 'fault' to refer to these. We must also consider whether any fault has had an adverse impact on the person making the complaint. I refer to this as ‘injustice’. We provide a free service, but must use public money carefully. We may decide not to start or continue with an investigation if we believe:
• the fault has not caused injustice to the person who complained, or
• the injustice is not significant enough to justify the cost of our involvement. (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended)

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How I considered this complaint

5. I considered the information Mrs X provided with her complaint and the Council’s responses which it provided. I have discussed the case with Mrs X.

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What I found

6. Mrs X’s child, B, has special educational needs.
7. A child with special educational needs may have an Education, Health and Care (EHC) plan. This sets out the child’s needs and what arrangements should be made to meet them. The EHC plan is set out in sections. We cannot direct changes to the sections about education or name a different school. Only the Tribunal can do this.
8. We can consider the other sections of an EHC plan. We do this by checking the Council followed the correct process, and take account of all relevant information, in deciding what to include. If we find fault affected the outcome, we may ask the Council to reconsider.
9. Mrs X says that following a request to assess B and provide an EHC Plan, the Council failed to follow the set timescales, failed to provide information and failed to provide the right provision to B. After the Council issued an EHC Plan, Mrs X appealed this to the Tribunal as she does not believe it meets B’s needs. She says a hearing is fixed for January 2021. She says the Council has recently signaled it will agree the provision Mrs X’s wants but this has not been finalized yet.
10. Until the final EHC Plan is known, we cannot work out the extent of the injustice caused to Mrs X and B by any Council faults in the EHC Plan assessment process.

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Final decision

11. The Ombudsman will not investigate Mrs X’s complaint because it is not possible to work out the injustice to her and B until the Tribunal process has concluded.

Investigator’s decision on behalf of the Ombudsman

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman