Summary: Miss X complained the Council delayed completing her child (Y’s) Education, Health and Care (EHC) needs assessment in line with statutory timescales. This in turn caused a delay in issuing the EHC Plan. The Council was at fault. It failed to issue Y’s EHC Plan within the statutory timescales, caused in part by a delay in obtaining Educational Psychologist advice. The Council has agreed to make a payment to recognise the loss of provision and the distress, frustration and uncertainty caused.

The complaint

1. Miss X complained the Council delayed completing her child (Y’s) Education, Health and Care (EHC) needs assessment in line with statutory timescales. This in turn caused a delay in issuing the EHC plan. This has caused distress, frustration, and uncertainty about the provision Y would receive.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

2. 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’. If there has been fault which has caused significant injustice, or that could cause injustice to others in the future we may suggest a remedy. (Local Government Act 1974, sections 26(1) and 26A(1), as amended)
3. 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. 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)
5. Under our information sharing agreement, we will share this decision with the Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills (Ofsted).

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How I considered this complaint

6. I considered evidence provided by Miss X and the Council as well as relevant law, policy and guidance.
7. Miss X and the Council had an opportunity to comment on my draft decision. I considered any comments before making a final decision.

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What I found

8. A child or young person with special educational needs may have an Education, Health and Care (EHC) Plan. This document 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 their needs, education, or the name of the educational placement. Only the tribunal or the council can do this.
9. 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 Code is based on the Children and Families Act 2014 and the SEND 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 a child’s needs and developing EHC Plans “must be carried out in a timely manner”. Steps must be completed as soon as practicable; and
• 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.

10. As part of the EHC assessment councils must gather advice from relevant professionals (SEND 2014 Regulations, Regulation 6(1)). This includes advice and information from an Educational Psychologist (EP). It must also seek advice and information from other professionals requested by the parent, if it considers it is reasonable to do so. Those consulted have six weeks to provide the advice.

What happened

11. Miss X has a child Y, who started primary school in September 2024. Y has special educational needs. In November 2023, Mrs X asked the Council to carry out an Education, Health and Care (EHC) needs assessment. The Council agreed to carry out the assessment and requested Educational Psychologist (EP) advice. It should have received the EP advice by early February 2024 and ultimately it should have issued the final EHC Plan by late March 2024.
12. The Council received the EP advice in mid July 2024 which was a delay of 23 weeks. The Council subsequently decided to issue Y with an EHC Plan. It issued the final Plan at the end of October 2024, after Y had already started primary school. Section F outlined the specialist provision Y was entitled to which included:
• Timetabled support across the school day to assist with interactions
• Inclusion in intervention groups to develop Y’s social interaction and language skills
• Direct input from Speech and Language Therapy (SALT) for up to four 30 minute sessions per term
• Inclusion in intervention groups to develop Y’s attention skills
• Small group learning sessions throughout the day
• Close adult supervision and monitoring throughout the day whilst Y’s understanding in relation to safe behaviour is developing
13. In November 2024, Miss X raised a stage one complaint about the Council’s failure to issue Y’s final EHC Plan inside of statutory timescales. The Council issued a stage one complaint response in December 2024 upholding the complaint and apologising for the delays. It attributed this to a shortage of EPs.
14. Miss X escalated her complaint to stage two. In January 2025, the Council issued a stage two response reiterating its previous response.
15. Miss X remained dissatisfied with the Council’s handling of the matter and complained to us.

The Council’s response to our enquiries

16. The Council has provided evidence it has an action plan in place to reduce delays in the EHC Plan process including delays in obtaining Educational Psychologist advice and delays in the plan writing process.
17. The Council said over the last 12 months it has recruited 20 additional locum EP’s as well as an additional 12 SEND assessment staff. The Council has reduced its backlog of 280 outstanding EHC assessments to 19 as of June 2025.

My findings

18. Following Miss X’s request for the Council to carry out an EHC needs assessment, it had to follow the statutory timescales set out in the law and the code. Therefore, the Council should have decided whether to issue a Plan by February 2024 and then issued the final Plan by end of March 2024.
19. The EP advice should have been available to the Council by the start of February 2024 in order for it to have met the March deadline. It did not receive the EP report until mid-July 2024 which was a delay of 23 weeks and fault. This service failure came about due to the Council being unable to recruit enough EPs to meet demand and a backlog of cases.
20. After the EP gave their advice, the Council then took too long to finalise Y’s EHC Plan. With EP advice in hand, it should have issued the final Plan within eight weeks of receiving the EP advice, taking account of the timescales set out in the Code. This includes time to:
• write a draft EHC Plan;
• issue it to the family and give them 15 days to consider the draft EHC plan and provide their comments; and
• 15 days for the education establishment to comment.
21. The overall guidance is that final plans should be issued as quickly as possible.
22. This should have been completed by Mid September 2024 at the latest but was delayed by six weeks. This fault caused a six week delay to Y receiving the provision in their EHC Plan. This caused Miss X distress, frustration and uncertainty about the provision Y would receive.
23. The Council has provided us with an action plan addressing its delays in the EHC Plan process. Therefore, it does not require a further service improvement.

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Action

24. Within one month of the final decision, the Council has agreed to take the following action:
1. Pay Miss X £500 to acknowledge the distress, frustration and uncertainty caused to her by the Council’s delay in issuing Y with an EHC Plan caused by the delay in obtaining advice from an Educational Psychologist.
2. Pay Miss X £450 to recognise Y’s loss of opportunity to receive provision in line with their EHC plan between September and October 2024 caused by the delay in issuing the final Plan after it had obtained EP advice.
25. The Council should provide us with evidence it has complied with the above actions.

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Decision

26. I find fault causing injustice. The Council has agreed actions to remedy injustice.

Investigator’s decision on behalf of the Ombudsman

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman