Summary: Miss X complained the Council delayed finalising her daughter’s Education, Health and Care plan and failed to ensure suitable education was provided during this period. We have found the Council was at fault. It caused a delay of nine months and continues to cause delay. This likely meant Miss X’s daughter missed out on the education and support she needed. Miss X herself also likely experienced inconvenience and distress. The Council has agreed to take action to address their injustice.

The complaint

1. Miss X complains about the Council’s delay in finalising her daughter, Y’s, Education, Health and Care (EHC) plan, and about Y being out of education for a prolonged period. She says the delays are impacting on Y’s education and wellbeing as well as causing her own distress and frustration.

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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. We cannot investigate late complaints unless we decide there are good reasons. Late complaints are when someone takes more than 12 months to complain to us about something a council has done. (Local Government Act 1974, sections 26B and 34D, 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(1), 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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What I have and have not investigated

6. I have investigated Miss X’s complaint about her daughter’s lack of education from March 2024 as this is when my investigation shows the Council became aware of the issue. I have not investigated earlier events, from 2023 as they are late, and I have decided there are no good reasons why Miss X could not have complained to us sooner.

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How I considered this complaint

7. I considered evidence provided by Miss X and the Council as well as relevant law, policy and guidance.
8. 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

Statutory Guidance

9. A child with special educational needs may have an EHC plan. This document describes the arrangements which should be made to meet the child’s needs.
10. Statutory government guidance (the ‘SEND code of practice’) says that, within six weeks of receiving a request for an EHC needs assessment, the council must write to the child’s parent and tell them whether it will do an assessment.
11. If the council goes on to issue an EHC plan, the whole process (from the assessment request to the plan being issued) must take no more than 20 weeks.
12. When a child (of compulsory age) cannot go to school, the council must find out why. If there is a duty for it to act, it must make alternative arrangements to provide a suitable education. The council has a statutory duty under Section 19 of the Education Act 1996 to provide full-time education where a child cannot attend school because of exclusion, medical reasons, or ‘otherwise’. 

What happened

13. In March 2024, Miss X applied for an EHC needs assessment for Y, which was initially declined. In her request, she explained that Y had not consistently attended school for two years and outlined the barriers to attendance. She also stated that Y had not attended school since the autumn term.
14. In May 2024, a ‘way forward’ meeting took place. All the professionals agreed that Y needed an EHC needs assessment, and a new application was submitted.
15. In September 2024, Miss X contacted the Council asking for an update, saying that Y had not attended school all term. The Council responded, agreeing to carry out the assessment.
16. In March 2025, Miss X made a complaint to the Council about the delay in the EHC needs assessment and Y’s lack of suitable education.
17. The Council responded in the same month, explaining that problems with recruiting and keeping Educational Psychologists had caused the delay in responding to the EHC assessment request.
18. In April 2025, the Council’s Education Access Team received a Section 19 medical request from Y’s school. Before this, Y’s absences were being recorded as unauthorised.
19. After the request, Section 19 was approved, and the Council contacted Y’s school to arrange a meeting to plan the best support for Y.
20. The meeting took place in May 2025. The Council agreed to provide 1:1 tuition through its Individual Packages of Support (IPES) to meet its statutory duties. An action plan was created so that Y’s tuition would increase over time.
21. The tuition started in June 2025.
22. In September 2025, the Educational Psychologist carried out the assessment for Y’s EHC needs.
23. The EHC plan has still not been finalised.

My findings

24. The statutory timescale for issuing EHC plans is clear and non-negotiable. The Council should have issued Y’s plan by January 2025. The plan is still outstanding which is ongoing fault.
25. The Council has explained the reason for the delay. I accept that there have been national problems recruiting educational psychologists to assess children’s special educational needs. However, this does not change the statutory timescale, or the injustice caused to Miss X and Y from the delay.
26. I consider it likely that, because of the delay in Y’s EHC plan, she missed out on some support, and Miss X experienced inconvenience, including having to make a complaint to the Council and later to us.
27. The Council was informed in March 2024 and again in September 2024 that Y was not receiving education. However, although Miss X gave this information to the Council’s SEND service, it did not pass the information on to the Council’s education welfare service (which deals with requests for alternative provision under section 19 of the Education Act).
28. This may have been the reason that the Council did not take action to consider its section 19 duty to Y at any point prior to April 2025.
29. It was not Miss X’s fault that the information about Y not attending school was not shared between Council departments. She informed the Council as a corporate entity, and I would expect it to have had a mechanism in place to ensure that the information reached the right place within the Council.
30. This did not happen, which meant the Council did not consider its potential section 19 duty to Y for over a year after first being informed that she was not attending school. Although Y had a named school, the ultimate section 19 responsibility was the Council’s, not the school’s. The Council was at fault for this lack of consideration over a prolonged period.
31. Because of this, it is not possible now to say the extent to which Y should have been given alternative educational provision over that period. But, given that alternative provision was subsequently agreed by the Council, it is likely that she missed out on at least some education. Certainly, I have seen no reason why alternative provision would not have been agreed if the Council had considered its section 19 duty earlier.
32. This means Y suffered an injustice, which the Council will now take action to remedy.
    
    
     

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Action

33. Within four weeks, the Council has agreed to:
• Issue the final EHC plan.
• Write to Miss X, apologising for the delay in issuing Y’s EHC plan and the prolonged delay in providing Y with a suitable education. We publish guidance which sets out what we expect an effective apology to look like. The Council will consider this guidance when writing to Miss X.
• Make a symbolic payment of £4,000 to reflect Y’s loss of educational provision between March 2024 and June 2025.
• Once the Council has finalised the EHC plan, a symbolic payment should be made, calculated at the rate of £100 per month to acknowledge and remedy the continued delay beyond the statutory timeframe.
34. Within 12 weeks, the Council will write to us, setting out how it will ensure in future that, when a parent or school notifies the Council of a pupil’s non-attendance, the relevant department is informed and can coordinate follow-up action to ensure children missing from education are identified and their needs are met. In doing so, the Council will consider:
• A formal communication process between its SEND and education welfare teams.
• Reviewing its policies and procedures to ensure it retains sufficient oversight of children missing from education.
35. The Council will provide us with evidence it has complied with the above actions.

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Decision

36. The Council was at fault. This caused injustice to Miss X and Y, which the Council will now take action to address.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman