Summary: We will not investigate this complaint that the Council has failed to properly identify and meet the complainant’s daughter’s special educational needs. There is insufficient evidence of fault on the Council’s part to warrant investigation, and it would have been reasonable for the complainant to use her right to appeal to the First-tier Tribunal (Special Educational Needs and Disability).

The complaint

1. The complainant, Mrs X, complains that the Council has failed to properly identify and meet her daughter’s special educational needs.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

2. We investigate complaints about ‘maladministration’ and ‘service failure’, which we call ‘fault’. We must also consider whether any fault has had an adverse impact on the person making the complaint, which we call ‘injustice’. We provide a free service, but must use public money carefully. We do not start or continue an investigation if we decide there is not enough evidence of fault to justify investigating, or we cannot achieve the outcome someone wants. (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended, section 34(B))
3. The law says we cannot normally investigate a complaint when someone has a right of appeal, reference or review 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 use this right. (Local Government Act 1974, section 26(6)(a), as amended)
4. The First-tier Tribunal (Special Educational Needs and Disability) considers appeals against council decisions regarding special educational needs. We refer to it as the Tribunal in this decision statement.

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How I considered this complaint

5. I considered information provided by the complainant and the Council.
6. I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.

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My assessment

7. Mrs X’s daughter has special educational needs. Mrs X says the Council repeatedly resisted issuing an Education Health and Care (EHC) plan and, when an EHC plan was issued, the school named in it was unable to meet her daughter’s needs. As a result, her daughter’s education and welfare have suffered.
8. Mrs X made a complaint to the Council in February 2025. She said her daughter’s school could not meet her needs and that, as a result, she was unable to attend. She said this was, in part, the result of the Council’s earlier refusal to agree to provide school transport. She complained that the Council had failed to issue an amended EHC plan within the statutory timescale following the review meeting in December 2024, and asked that a place at a specialist school, and appropriate alternative educational provision, be expedited.
9. In response, the Council apologised for the delay in issuing an amended Final EHC plan, and undertook to do so by March 2025. The correspondence Mrs X has provided indicates that it did so. It said it would speak to the school regarding Mrs X’s daughter’s access to provision, and ask to be kept informed.
10. Mrs X says the outcome she is seeking from her complaint to the Ombudsman is that the Council give her daughter a place at a specialist school.
11. The Ombudsman will not investigate Ms X’s complaint. We cannot comment on whether the provision set out in an EHC plan is appropriate., and it is not for us to express a view on the educational setting named in Section I of an EHC plan. This is because these matters carry the right to appeal to the Tribunal. Where appeal rights exist, the Ombudsman normally expects them to be used, and it would have been reasonable for Mrs X to do so in this case. We cannot achieve the outcome Mrs X wants.
12. The correspondence shows that the amended EHC plan following the December 2024 review was subject to delay. The delay was not so significant as to warrant the Ombudsman’s intervention. There are insufficient grounds for us to investigate the Council’s response to Mrs X’s request for alternative provision. It was reasonable for the Council to say that it would liaise with the school in the first instance. This response is not indicative of fault.

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Final decision

13. We will not investigate Mrs X’s complaint because there is insufficient evidence of fault on the Council’s part, and it would have been reasonable for Mrs X to use her right to appeal.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman