London Borough of Havering (25 002 039)
Category : Education > Special educational needs
Decision : Closed after initial enquiries
Decision date : 06 Jan 2026
The Ombudsman's final decision:
Summary: We cannot investigate Mrs X’s complaint about the Council’s refusal to issue her child an Education Health and Care Plan. This is because Mrs X has used her right of appeal against the Council’s decision.
The complaint
- Mrs X complains the Council have refused to issue her child, Y with an Educational Health and Care (EHC) Plan.
The Ombudsman’s role and powers
- The Local Government Act 1974 sets out our powers but also imposes restrictions on what we can investigate.
- We cannot investigate a complaint if someone has appealed to a tribunal about the same matter. We also cannot investigate a complaint if in doing so we would overlap with the role of a tribunal to decide something which has been or could have been referred to it to resolve using its own powers. (Local Government Act 1974, section 26(6)(a), as amended)
- 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.
How I considered this complaint
- I considered information provided by the complainant and the Council.
- I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.
My assessment
- Mrs X has a child Y. Mrs X asked the Council to assess Y for an EHC Plan. The Council decided not to issue Y an EHC Plan.
- The SEND Tribunal considers appeals against decisions not to issue EHC Plans. We understand Mrs X has appealed to the tribunal. This places the complaint outside of our jurisdiction.
- We will also not investigate how the Council dealt with Mrs X’s complaint. While we recognise there have been significant delays in the Council’s complaint process, it is not a good use of public resources to investigate complaints about complaint handling when we are not looking at the substantive issue.
Final decision
- We will not investigate Mrs X’s complaint. Mrs X has used her right of appeal against the Council’s decision.
Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman