Summary: Mrs X complained about the Council’s delay in issuing an Education, Health and Care plan for her son, Y, and its failure to provide full-time alternative education when he was unable to attend school. The Council was a fault for delay in issuing the plan, failed to keep a record of why it decided the part-time alternative education was suitable for Y, and failed to respond to the complaint. It should apologise, make a payment to Mrs X and consider what steps it can take to reduce the delays in obtaining advice from educational psychologists.

The complaint

1. Mrs X complained, on behalf of her son, Y, about the Council’s:
1. handling of Y’s Education Health and Care (EHC) needs assessment and a delay in issuing a final EHC plan;
2. failure to provide a suitable, full-time education for Y from May 2022 when he was unable to attend school on health grounds;
3. failure to provide the support set out in Y’s EHC plan since 18 October 2022; and
4. failure to respond to Mrs X’s complaint or communicate appropriately with her.
2. As a result of these failings, Mrs X said Y missed out on education and educational support, which means he has fallen behind and become socially isolated, and his anxiety has increased. Mrs X says she was caused stress and anxiety and had to stop working due to the demands of caring for Y and pursuing the Council. Mrs X says there were financial implications, as the family had to fund a SEND legal advocate and pay for private assessments for Y.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

3. We investigate complaints of injustice caused by ‘maladministration’  and ‘service failure’. I have used the word fault to refer to these. Service failure can happen when an organisation fails to provide a service as it should have done because of circumstances outside its control. We do not need to show any blame, intent, flawed policy or process, or bad faith by an organisation to say service failure (fault) has occurred. (Local Government Act 1974, sections 26(1), as amended)
4. We investigate complaints of injustice caused by ‘maladministration’ and ‘service failure’. I have used the word fault to refer to these. We consider whether there was fault in the way an organisation made its decision. If there was no fault in the decision making, we cannot question the outcome. (Local Government Act 1974, section 34(3), as amended)
5. The law says we cannot normally investigate a complaint when someone can appeal to a tribunal about the same matter. However, we may decide to investigate if we consider it would be unreasonable to expect the person to appeal. (Local Government Act 1974, section 26(6)(a), as amended)
6. The First-tier Tribunal (Special Educational Needs and Disability) considers appeals against council decisions regarding special educational needs. We refer to it as the SEND Tribunal in this decision statement.
7. If we are satisfied with an organisation’s actions or proposed actions, we can complete our investigation and issue a decision statement. (Local Government Act 1974, section 30(1B) and 34H(i), as amended)

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How I considered this complaint

8. I considered:
• the information Mrs X sent me, and spoke to her about the complaint;
• the information the Council sent in response to my enquiries;
• relevant law and guidance, as set out below; and
• our guidance on remedies, available on our website.
9. Mrs X and the Council had an opportunity to comment on my draft decision. I considered any comments received before making a final decision.

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What I found

Relevant law and guidance

Special educational needs (SEN)

10. 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 SEND tribunal can do this.
11. We can consider the other sections of an EHC plan. We do this by checking the Council followed the correct process, and took account of all relevant information, in deciding what to include. If we find fault affected the outcome, we may ask the Council to reconsider. We will not usually substitute our judgement for the judgement of professionals.
12. Statutory guidance ‘Special educational needs and disability Code of Practice: 0 to 25 years’ (‘the Code’) sets out the process for carrying out EHC assessments and producing EHC plans. The guidance is based on the Children and Families Act 2014 and the SEN Regulations 2014. It says:
• where a council receives a request for an EHC needs assessment it must give its decision within six weeks whether to agree to the assessment;
• the process of assessing needs and developing EHC plans “must be carried out in a timely manner”. Steps must be completed as soon as practicable;
• the whole process from the point when an assessment is requested until the final EHC plan is issued must take no more than 20 weeks (unless certain specific circumstances apply); and
• councils must give the child’s parent or the young person 15 days to comment on a draft EHC plan.
13. Section 26 of the Children and Families Act 2014 says councils and their partner commissioning bodies must make arrangements (“joint commissioning arrangements”) about the education, health and care provision to be secured for children who have SEN. This must include arrangements for securing EHC needs assessments.
14. Regulation 6 of the Special Educational Needs and Disability Regulations 2014 (the Regulations) says when carrying out an EHC needs assessment, a council must seek advice, including advice from health professionals, about the needs of the child or young person and the support they may need to achieve the intended outcomes.
15. Regulation 8 says where a council requests the cooperation of another body in securing an EHC needs assessment, that body must comply with such a request within 6 weeks of the date they receive it. A body need not comply if it is impractical to do so because:
1. exceptional circumstances affect the child, the child’s parent or the young person during that 6 week period;
2. the child, the child’s parent or the young person are absent from the area for a continuous period of not less than 4 weeks during that 6 week period; or
3. the child or young person fails to keep an appointment for an examination or test made by the body during that 6 week period.
16. The Council for Disabled Children has provided guidance on the “Requirements to provide Health Advice within six weeks”, which is available on its website. This provides guidance on how health providers can meet their obligations in respect of EHC assessments and plans.

Alternative education

17. Councils must arrange suitable education at school or elsewhere for pupils who are out of school because of exclusion, illness or for other reasons, if they would not receive suitable education without such arrangements. [The provision generally should be full-time unless it is not in the child’s interests.] (Education Act 1996, section 19). We refer to this as section 19 or alternative education provision.
18. The statutory guidance says the duty to provide a suitable education applies “to all children of compulsory school age resident in the council area, whether or not they are on the roll of a school, and whatever type of school they attend”.
19. Statutory guidance, ‘Ensuring a good education for children who cannot attend school because of health needs’ says that if specific medical evidence, such as that provided by a medical consultant, is not quickly available, councils should “consider liaising with other medical professionals, such as the child’s GP, and consider looking at other evidence to ensure minimal delay in arranging appropriate provision for the child”.
20. Suitable education means efficient education suitable to a child’s age, ability and aptitude and to any special educational needs he may have. (Education Act 1996, section 19(6))
21. The education provided by the council must be full-time unless the council determines that full-time education would not be in the child’s best interests for reasons of the child’s physical or mental health. (Education Act 1996, section 3A and 3AA)
22. The law does not define full-time education but children with health needs should have provision which is equivalent to the education they would receive in school. If they receive one-to-one tuition, for example, the hours of face-to-face provision could be fewer as the provision is more concentrated. (Statutory guidance, ‘Ensuring a good education for children who cannot attend school because of health needs’)

The Council’s complaints process

23. The Council’s process has two stages:
• At stage 1, the Council expects to respond within 10 working days and will contact the complainant if it needs longer.
• At stage 2, the complaint will be investigated by a senior member of staff who is independent of the department complained about. The process does not specify a timescale for responding at stage 2.

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What happened

24. Y attended school 1, a mainstream primary school, but was struggling with the school environment. School 1 reported Y was increasingly anxious from September 2021. Mrs X requested a private assessment by a speech and language therapist (SALT) and their report, dated December 2021, suggested Y may have autism. Also, in late 2021, Y was off school for about a month due to needing medical treatment. During the Christmas holidays, Mrs X spoke to school 1, which agreed a part-time timetable as part of a phased return to school. This meant Y was expected to attend 3 hours each morning from January 2022.
25. In early February, the family GP wrote to school 1 to say Y was struggling with the reduced timetable and asked it to consider a more flexible reduced timetable, particularly over the next few weeks until he had been seen by the community paediatrician.
26. Also in February, Mrs X arranged a private OT assessment, and she paid for the OT to attend an in-person meeting at school 1 to support the school to meet Y’s needs. This identified the extent of Y’s needs. In late February, school 1 agreed to provide one-to-one support for Y, but said it could only do this for the morning sessions.
27. Mrs X requested an EHC needs assessment on 24 March 2022. She sent the Council the private reports she had obtained to support the application.
28. On 1 April Mrs X asked the Council if it would accept a private diagnosis of autism and stated the company she proposed to use. The Council responded that it would usually wait for an NHS diagnosis before recording it in an EHC plan but that the recommended support would be based on Y’s needs and presentation rather than the diagnosis itself.
29. On 5 April, Mrs X told the Council Y had been attending school on a part-time basis since January, pending a decision about whether the Council would issue an EHC plan. She asked for advice about what support the school should be providing. The Council said she should contact the special educational needs coordinator (SENDCO) at school 1.
30. Mrs X told me Y did not receive any education in core subjects after 8 April 2021.
31. The Council agreed to carry out an EHC needs assessment on 12 May 2022. Council records show that on 13 May it asked professionals to send it advice by 24 June, and it sent a form to Mrs X for her to provide parents’ views. Apart from the educational psychologist (EP) report, there was no delay in obtaining responses. Y was not known to NHS services at this point.
32. In late May 2022, Mrs X asked the Council to obtain:
• an educational psychology (EP) assessment;
• a full occupational therapy (OT) and sensory integration report, because OT needs had been identified by the school, his parents and a private OT report;
• a speech and language therapy (SALT) assessment because SALT needs had been identified previously, although not for an EHC needs assessment, and Y’s needs had changed significantly over recent months; and
• a social care assessment to consider whether he had social care needs based on his disabilities.
33. Mrs X informed the Council on 30 May 2022 that Y was medically unfit for school and asked it to arrange alternative education for him. She sent an email on 10 June to confirm Y’s mental health meant he was too unwell to attend school and enclosed a letter from his GP. The GP letter:
• confirmed Y’s autism diagnosis and associated anxiety, which they said should be treated as a mental health need, linked to disability;
• stated Y was suffering significant distress in attending school, and this was likely to be an ongoing issue until adjustments were made; and
• said that, due to his diagnosis, absences from school because Y was too anxious to attend should be recorded as illness.
34. The Council responded on 17 June to say it had asked the EP assigned to school 1 to meet with the school’s special educational needs coordinator (SENCO) to discuss what steps could be taken to support him to return to school. Mrs X responded that the Council had a duty under section 19 to arrange alternative provision as Y was unable to attend school “because of illness or other reasons” and referred it to the GP letter.
35. Also on 17 June, the Council confirmed it had requested advice from OT and SALT for the EHC needs assessment but said the threshold for involvement was decided by those services. It said, if they did not agree to assess, the Council had specialist health advisers who could provide advice. It also apologised that the allocated officer, officer A, had not yet been in touch.
36. Officer A emailed the same day and arranged an online meeting a few days later. Following this, officer A emailed to say she had spoken to managers about the use of private reports in EHC needs assessments. She confirmed the Council would consider private reports individually on their merits and include them in the assessment if this was considered reasonable.
37. On 23 June, Mrs X spoke to officer B, a manager, to express her concern that Y was not receiving any education and explained that he needed a high level of support, which meant it was not appropriate for the school to send work home for him to complete. Officer B confirmed by email that he would update her about alternative provision as soon as possible.
38. Mrs X emailed officer B on 28 June and 10 July but did not receive a response and asked the Council to “escalate” her complaint on 13 July 2022. She had a further discussion with officer B on 14 July. She said he told her it was school 1’s responsibility to arrange alternative provision and she told him it was the Council’s responsibility to do so. She said Officer B confirmed the Council had not taken any steps to arrange alternative provision.
39. On 15 July, the Council wrote to Mrs X to say it had been working with school 1 to adapt Y’s education to meet his needs in line with advice from an occupational therapist (OT). Mrs X said school 1 told her it had not been contacted by the Council about this. However, I have seen a record the Council had spoken to the school’s SENCO about the adjustments it had made to Y’s education in light of the private OT report.
40. Also in July, Mrs X asked the Council if Y could be assessed by the same EP who had assessed his sibling, which the Council agreed to. Although the Council initially said this contributed to the delay in obtaining the EP report, the records seen indicate this was not the case.
41. On 3 August 2022, the Council’s panel agreed to issue an EHC plan. The Council’s email confirming the outcome said the panel:
• considered the draft EHC plan that had been prepared needed some updating;
• the private diagnosis of ASD posed some challenges as it had not been made by a paediatrician or psychiatrist; and
• agreed Y’s provision exceeded that normally available in a mainstream setting and this would most likely mean a resource or access centre was needed. The panel considered the most appropriate setting was school 2, a specialist provision for children with ASD, but the Council invited Mrs X to let it know if she wanted it to consult with any other educational settings.
42. Mrs X said she was pleased the Council had agreed to issue an EHC plan and agreed he needed a specialist provision. However, she was concerned the panel had not fully appreciated that Y needed a slow and careful transition back to school, having been out of school for several months. Given the likely timescales for finalising the plan, she said it was essential for the Council to arrange alternative provision to start in September 2022. In response, the Council said it hoped to identify a suitable setting by September but agreed Y would need a gradual transition towards full time education.
43. On 17 August, the Council issued a draft EHC plan and confirmed it would be consulting with school 2. It said it would remain school 1’s responsibility to provide a suitable education for Y until it issued a final plan, naming a setting that could meet Y’s needs.
44. In mid-August, school 2 informed Mrs X that its access centre was full for 2022-23. It said the only consultation it had received was for mainstream provision, which it understood had been requested as parental preference. When Mrs X asked the Council for an explanation, it said this was an error, and that it would ensure the correct consultation was sent immediately with parental preference stated as Education Otherwise Than in School (EOTAS). The next working day, it apologised for the error and confirmed the correct consultation had been sent.
45. In response to the consultation, school 2 said:
• it could not take another child due to the physical space available and the needs of other children;
• it noted Y found change tricky and considered it was not in his interests to place him in a setting for one year and then go through another transition to another school;
• there would not be a suitable peer group for Y because the other pupils were mostly pre-verbal and Y’s academic ability would be far above the rest of the cohort.
46. By mid-September 2022, despite consulting with seven schools, the Council had not identified a suitable placement for Y. Following a further panel discussion, the Council agreed to fund the following package, which amounted to 10 hours per week:
• two sessions per week at a Forest school;
• one hour per week of play therapy; and
• five hours per week tutoring (increased to 7 hours in November).

The panel did not agree to fund the other items Mrs X requested, such as OT, swimming, and equine therapy, on the basis it did not consider there was sufficient evidence to suggest funding for these was needed. It said it would speak to school 3 to discuss whether it could oversee the package.

47. Mrs X was unhappy with the offer because the Council had not agreed to all the provision she requested and because the provision was not full time. She also said that, although the Council agreed to pay band 5 funding from 1 September 2022, it did not do so, which meant school 1 did not have the funds to arrange the provision in Y’s EHC plan.
48. In response to my enquiries, the Council said it was aware school 1 proposed to put provision in place from 12 September, but it could not release the funding until the final EHC plan was issued on 18 October. It said school 1 would normally have received this in the next funding cycle but by that point an amended EHC plan had been issued and a personal budget agreed. Despite this, school 1 did deliver the agreed package.
49. The Council issued a final EHCP on 18 October, which named school 1 as the educational setting “transferring to specialist setting once identified”. The Council said it had sent a copy of the plan to school 1, which would oversee Y’s alternative provision until a specialist place was identified.
50. In October 2022, the Council reconsidered Mrs X’s proposals for an EOTAS package, which she wanted it to fund through a personal budget so she could arrange the provision herself. The Council agreed the proposed EOTAS package, apart from one item, in late October. It also agreed to back-date the funding to 18 October, the date the final EHC plan was issued.
51. On 29 November 2022, the Council issued a final amended EHC plan to reflect the EOTAS package agreed. It sent a personal budget form for Mrs X to complete in late November. It accepts the monthly payment was calculated incorrectly. Mrs X alerted it to this on 1 December and a revised form was sent a few days later. The Council said the calculations were corrected before the first payment was made on 6 January. Mrs X said the Council did not inform her it had made the payment or provide a breakdown to show how it calculated the payment.
52. In response to my enquiries, the Council said the delay in issuing Y’s EHC plan was due to:
• a delay in obtaining an EP report, which was not received until 22 July 2022;
• reduced staff capacity in the SEND team over the school summer holidays; and
• a delay in receiving consultation responses from schools, which were not received until September 2022 because the schools were closed in August.
53. It added that it has since increased capacity within the team to ensure that assessments are completed within statutory timescales, and that its service has improved considerably since January 2023. It did not explain what steps it had taken to reduce the delays in obtaining advice from educational psychologists.
54. In relation to the provision of alternative education, the Council said:
• it understood Y was receiving education in the period January to May 2022 and the GP had recommended he attend on a reduced timetable;
• GP letters dated 2 February and 27 May suggested a part-time timetable was appropriate for Y in that period;
• it considered the package agreed in September 2022, which included five hours per week tutoring, two Forest school sessions and some play therapy, was a suitable education for Y because this was the provision agreed by school 1 and Y’s parents and because one-to-one tutoring is of greater intensity than standard classroom teaching. At this point it had not received the responses to its consultations with schools so could not determine Y’s needs could not be met in school, which meant it had not agreed an EOTAS package.

Communications and complaints handling

55. Mrs X confirmed she wanted to pursue a formal complaint on 23 June 2022. She said she was told a Council officer would contact her about her complaint, but no-one did. Since the Council had not responded, Mrs X contacted her MP, who wrote to the Council in early August, and again in late October. The Council did not respond to Mrs X or the MP.
56. In addition to a significant number of chaser emails, Mrs X made further formal complaints in October and December 2022. When we accepted her complaint in early January 2023, she had not received a response.
57. On 24 January 2023, the Council apologised for the delay in responding to her complaint and its failure to keep her updated. It said it would review its process to ensure that when it acknowledged receipt of a stage 1 complaint, it did not unduly raise expectations about the timescale for responding, and to ensure that updates were provided to complainants during the complaints process. It did not respond to the substantive issues Mrs X complained about.
58. Ms X also complained that many of her emails were not responded to and raised concerns about some of the Council’s communications with her, including:
• telling her it was school 1’s responsibility to arrange alternative provision;
• initially advising her it would not accept private assessment reports or diagnoses, saying it would wait for NHS reports;
• falsely stating it was working with school 1 to arrange alternative provision
59. In response to my enquiries, the Council said:
• the delay in responding to Mrs X’s complaint was due to long term absence by the officer who was responsible for responding to complaints about the SEND team;
• it accepted that it had not responded to all the issues raised; and
• it had increased staffing in the SEND team to ensure that parents are kept informed of the progress of their child’s EHC plan.

My findings

EHC plan

60. Councils are required to confirm whether they have agreed to carry out an EHC needs assessment within six weeks of the request. On this occasion, the Council took seven weeks to confirm this. Although this is outside the statutory timescale, the delay is not sufficient to amount to fault.
61. Councils are required to issue a final EHC plan within 20 weeks of the date of the request. The Council issued Y’s final EHC plan on 18 October 2022. This was almost 30 weeks after the request. This delay was fault.
62. The Council consulted with appropriate professionals without delay. It was not able to obtain an EP report until late July. The Ombudsman is aware there is a national shortage of EPs, but the Council has not explained what steps it is taking to reduce the time taken to obtain EP reports. I will therefore make a recommendation about that.
63. There was no delay in deciding to issue an EHC plan after receiving the EP report and no delay in issuing the draft EHC plan after agreeing to do so. There was also no delay in consulting with schools after issuing the draft EHC plan although there was a delay in receiving responses because schools were closed for the summer break at that point. The Code at paragraph 9.42 says there may be circumstances in which it is not reasonable to expect councils to comply with the usual timescales, such as where the schools are closed for at least 4 weeks. There was an error with one of the consultations, which the Council corrected as soon as Mrs X pointed this out, and which does not amount to fault.
64. Councils will usually request advice for the EHC needs assessment from relevant NHS health professionals. Where it is not possible to obtain detailed advice from NHS health professionals, for example, because the child is on a long waiting list for an assessment, or the NHS has said they do not meet the threshold for an NHS assessment, the Council will consider whether private reports can be used. Where parents have obtained private reports already, the Council will need to consider whether they are suitable, given they were not prepared for an EHC needs assessment and may not contain all relevant information.
65. In this case, the Council initially advised Mrs X it would not consider the private reports she had obtained but, after considering this further, quickly agreed to do so. This was not fault. Mrs X said she was required to obtain the private reports due to the Council’s delay in carrying out the EHC assessment but, in fact, the private OT and SALT reports were requested before she asked the Council to carry out the EHC assessment in March 2022. Therefore, there are no grounds for me to recommend the Council reimburses Mrs X for those costs.

Alternative provision

66. Mrs X told the Council in late May that Y was not able to attend school on medical grounds. She provided a GP letter, which said Y was diagnosed with autism and was suffering significant distress when attending school. The GP did not say Y was unable to attend, but said adjustments needed to be made. Between January and May, school 1 had offered a part-time timetable, in line with earlier GP letters, and had adjusted the way it delivered this, in line with the private OT report and advice in February 2022. Since the Council was unaware Y was not attending school until late May, I do not find fault for this period.
67. Between late May and July 2022, the Council did not provide an alternative education for Y and Y was not able to access the part-time timetable at school 1. During this period, the Council was carrying out an EHC needs assessment to determine what support Y needed and whether that could be provided in school. Whilst I consider the Council could have been more proactive in arranging some alternative provision in this period, it would have taken some time to arrange this and that may not have been possible during that half-term. On this basis, I have not found fault.
68. From mid-September 2022, an alternative package was in place. This was not full-time. The Council said it considered the package was suitable because it had been agreed between Mrs X and school 1. We expect councils to record the reasons for deciding alternative provision was suitable, particularly where the provision is not full-time. I have not seen a record to show how the Council decided the provision was suitable in this case. The failure to properly record its reasons was fault.
69. By September, Y had been out of full-time education for two terms. The records show Mrs X said in August 2022 that Y would need a slow and careful transition back into education. Panel records for September 2022 stated Mrs X had reported that Y was calmer at home, but he was not able to engage with formal education. Several GP letters said Y needed part-time provision and a flexible timetable due to his anxiety. On balance, I find Y would not have been able to access full-time provision that term, but there remains some uncertainty about whether the package was a suitable education for Y, which is an injustice for him.

EOTAS package

70. Since the Council had not been able to identify a school that could meet Y’s needs, its panel agreed in late October to fund an EOTAS package using a personal budget so Mrs X could arrange the provision herself. It amended Y’s EHC plan in late November but agreed to back-date the funding to 18 October when the original EHC plan was issued. There was no fault with these actions.
71. The Council initially made a mistake in calculating the personal budget in late November 2022 and it is unclear when this was corrected. It did not make the first payment until 6 January 2023. However, given the need to set up the personal budget arrangement and the fact that Christmas holidays intervened, I do not consider this delay amounts to fault. In any case, the payments were backdated to 18 October so Mrs X will have the funds to arrange additional provision to make up for any gaps as a result of not being able to commission the provision until January 2023.

Communication and complaints handling

72. Mrs X complained on 23 June 2022. After chaser emails from Mrs X and enquiries from us, the Council responded on 24 January 2023. That response acknowledged its delay in responding, and its failure to keep Mrs X updated about the reasons for the delay, for which it apologised. It explained the action it would take to address those issues. However, the Council did not actually respond to the complaints Mrs X had made. The delay and failure to respond to the issues set out in the complaint, was fault. This fault caused Mrs X frustration, and she was put to avoidable time and trouble pursuing the Council for a response.
73. The records show Mrs X was in frequent contact with the Council, and she often emailed several staff members about the same matter. There is evidence that not all of her emails were responded to, but I find that generally she was kept updated about the EHC process. Two of her emails to officer B were not responded to but he did speak with her twice to discuss her concerns, as well as liaising with other staff to address them. On balance, the Council was not at fault.
74. In relation to the concerns Mrs X raised about the content of some of the Council’s communications:
• the Council was working with school 1 to agree and arrange a package of alternative provision. Whilst it is the Council’s responsibility to ensure that a suitable education was provided, it was not fault for it to ask school 1 to deliver this. Y was on the Roll for school 1 throughout that period and school 1 was named in the EHC plan in October 2022;
• as explained above, councils will need to consider whether private reports are suitable for an EHC needs assessment. When Mrs X raised this with officer A, officer A spoke to a manager, and quickly responded that the Council would consider using the private reports Mrs X had already obtained;
• the records show the Council had spoken to the SENCO at school 1 in June 2022 about the way it was adjusting the education provided for Y in light of the advice from the OT commissioned by Mrs X.
75. Given the records I have seen, I have not found fault with the content of the Council’s communications with Mrs X.

Injustice caused by the faults identified

76. The delay in obtaining EP advice for Y led to a delay in issuing a draft EHC plan, which delayed the process of consulting with schools (which were then closed for the school summer holidays) and agreeing an appropriate EOTAS package for Y. On balance, I find that but for the delays, the EOTAS package would have been agreed by late August 2022.
77. Although there was some alternative provision in place from September 2022, there is some uncertainty about whether that was a suitable education for Y, due to the lack of a detailed record to show how the Council considered this.
78. Mrs X was caused frustration by the faults in the complaints handling, and was put to avoidable time and trouble pursuing the matter with the Council.

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Agreed action

79. Within one month of the date of the final decision, the Council will:
• apologise to Mrs X for injustice caused by the delay in issuing Y’s EHC plan, the lack of a record to confirm its reasons for deciding the alternative provision in September 2022 provided a suitable education for Y, and the frustration and its failure to respond to Mrs X’s complaint; and
• pay Mrs X £150 to remedy the injustice caused by the complaints handling failures and a further £500, for the benefit of Y, to remedy the injustice caused by the other faults identified. This makes a total of £650 and is in line with our guidance on remedies, available on our website.
80. Within two months of the date of the final decision, the Council will review what steps it can take to reduce the delays in obtaining EP reports and produce an action plan to address this.
81. The Council will provide us with evidence it has complied with the above actions.

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Final decision

82. I have completed my investigation. I have found fault leading to personal injustice. I have recommended action to remedy the injustice and prevent recurrence of the fault.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman