Summary: We upheld a complaint from Miss B, that the Council failed to provide speech and language therapy, and occupational therapy, to her son after he began a college placement in October 2023. We found he suffered a loss of education provision as a result, which was an injustice. The Council accepted these findings and agreed to take action to remedy that injustice and improve its service.

The complaint

1. Miss B complained that her son, Mr C, who has special educational needs, did not receive speech and language therapy or occupational therapy between 2018 and 2025. This was despite him having Education, Health and Care (EHC) Plans for much of this time, which said he should receive this provision.
2. Miss B said because Mr C had not received this therapy, he struggled to interact with his peers and could not study some subject areas he wanted to. Miss B also said the lack of therapy contributed to Mr C not being able to attend school for several years. Miss B said she had put her career on hold and stayed home to care for Mr C, as the Council had not made suitable education provision for him.

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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. We consider whether there was fault in the way an organisation made its decision. If there was no fault in how the organisation made its decision, we cannot question the outcome. (Local Government Act 1974, section 34(3), as amended)
4. 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)
5. 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)
6. 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)
7. 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.
8. 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)
9. 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 did and did not investigate

10. I investigated events between September 2023 and June 2025 only.
11. Miss B did not contact us about her complaint until June 2025. Before that she complained to the Council in September 2024 and it provided three responses to two similar complaints, which I go on to detail below.
12. Because Miss B did not contact us until June 2025, her complaint about events before June 2024 was late. I decided to use discretion to investigate events from September 2023 considering there were good reasons for me to do so.
13. As I detail in the factual section of this statement below, this date marked the start of a new chapter in Mr C’s education. The Council issued him with an updated EHC Plan and identified he would start a post-16 college, which he began in October 2023. Miss B’s complaint in September 2024, was that the college had not provided Mr C with the provision detailed in his Plan – specifically speech and language therapy (SALT).
14. Miss B’s cause to complain about the college provision therefore arose after October 2023, when this lack of provision became clear. I could not fix an exact date but thought it likely Miss B knew she had cause to complain around January 2024. By this time Mr C would have attended the college for several weeks and so the lack of provision should have become known.
15. I found it surprising Miss B should wait another nine months to complain to the Council. But I accepted she may have tried to resolve her concerns with the college authorities first. I did not think it fair to penalise Miss B for that.
16. Further, after September 2024 the delay in Miss B contacting this office was for the good reason the Council had to complete its consideration of her complaint first. Once, it did so, she contacted us quickly.
17. Miss B’s complaint made to the Council in September 2024 asked it to consider Mr C’s education provision throughout the secondary phase of his education. Miss B said that despite Mr C having an EHC Plan for most of this time, she did not consider the Council had provided Mr C education in line with those Plans. Her complaint focused on his lack of SALT but also went beyond that.
18. In its replies to her complaint the Council did not engage with her complaint about this earlier period. As I have explained above, the presumption is that we would not investigate this period either, as this part of the complaint was also late. While I considered there were good reasons for us to investigate Miss B’s complaint about events from September 2023, I did not consider these extended to the earlier period.
19. First, I considered it important to remember the law is there for a reason. The further back in time we investigate, the harder it is for us to come to sound findings on a complaint. The Council may not have complete records, officers will have moved on and memories will inevitably fade. The further back in time we are asked to consider investigating, the better the reasons needed therefore to justify an investigation.
20. In this case Miss B said she did not complain to us sooner because:

• at the time, she had understood little of the procedure she needed to follow to secure special educational needs provision for Mr C. She had appealed successfully to a Tribunal in 2021 and understood that would result in Mr C receiving SALT. But she did not know of her right to complain to this office if the Council failed to provide education in line with Mr C’s Plan;
• even so, she had contacted the Council many times before September 2023 to try and secure SALT for Mr C, including via a social worker. She had also approached an NHS specialist clinician who had led her to believe the NHS might provide SALT to Mr C. This was something she pursued for a time, before the NHS redirected her to the Council;
• the Council had misunderstood what it had to provide as part of Mr C’s EHC Plan in force before August 2023. The evidence for this was in a reply to her complaint where it wrongly referred to Mr C being electively home educated before September 2023. Mr C’s EHC Plan said he would receive ‘education other than at school’, which is not the same.

21. I considered these points in turn. I accepted that navigating special educational needs provision for a child posed challenges for parents. In particular, there were differing circumstances where a parent may need to complain or to appeal to the Tribunal. Knowing which route to choose sometimes required taking advice. And both routes sometimes needed persistence, meaning parents might experience time and trouble seeking to resolve disputes.
22. But there was no evidence Miss B faced any challenges beyond those which any other parent of a child with special educational faced. She could clearly explain her complaint and had shown, by taking a case to Tribunal, that she could navigate a sometimes complex administrative process to seek justice for Mr C. I noted also there were many websites and sources of advice for parents, often written by other parents of children with special educational needs, that helped to explain both complaint and appeal procedures.
23. In addition, I could not consider the fact Miss B did not know about our office as a good reason for not complaining to us sooner. As an organisation we have existed for over 50 years, and those same websites explained our role for parents. Further, I checked the Council’s own website, both now and historic versions, which referred to our role.
24. I did not doubt that before September 2023 Miss B had contacted the Council at different points about Mr C’s provision. But she did not provide evidence showing it thwarted any attempt she made to pursue a complaint with it. Nor that it wrongly signposted her at any point to make an appeal or complain to another organisation.
25. I accepted the point made by Miss B that the Council’s reply to her complaint had contained a factual error about the nature of Mr C’s provision before September 2023. However, I did not consider this relevant to my consideration on whether there were good reasons to accept a late complaint from her.
26. For the reasons set out in paragraphs 21 to 25 I therefore did not consider I could investigate Miss B’s complaint about events before September 2023.
27. I could not investigate events beyond June 2025 as this is when we began our assessment of Miss B’s complaint.

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How I considered this complaint

28. I considered evidence provided by Miss B and the Council as well as relevant law, policy and guidance.
29. I gave Miss B and the Council chance to comment on a draft version of this decision statement and provide any further evidence they considered relevant to its content. I took account of their responses to the draft decision, before finalising the content of the decision statement.

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What I found

Relevant legal considerations

30. A child or young person with special educational needs may have an EHC Plan. This document sets out the child’s needs and arrangements made to meet them. An EHC Plan has sections, including Section F, which explains the special educational provision needed by the child or young person. This can include therapeutic provisions such as SALT or occupational therapy (OT). Section I contains details of the child or young person’s education placement. 
31. A council has a duty to make sure the child or young person receives the special educational provision set out in section F of an EHC Plan (Section 42 Children and Families Act). The Courts have said that councils owe the duty to arrange this provision personally to the child and cannot delegate that. So, if a council asks another organisation to make the provision and that organisation fails to do so, the council remains liable ( see R v London Borough of Harrow ex parte M [1997] ELR 62 and R v North Tyneside Borough Council [2010] EWCA Civ 135).   

The key facts

32. At the end of August 2023, the Council issued Mr C with an updated EHC Plan. This identified he would attend a mainstream post-16 college. Mr C began attending this institution from October 2023.
33. Mr C’s Plan said he would receive SALT via direct support from a speech and language therapist for six hours during the school year. They would also provide four hours of indirect support, including working with one of Mr C’s “key adults” who would also help Mr C with his communication needs.
34. The Plan also identified Mr C would receive 9.5 hours a year of OT, comprising assessments at the start and end of the school year and seven sessions of direct work in between. The occupational therapist would also provide indirect support including drafting a programme of activities to support Mr C, which they would discuss with the college and his parents.
35. The Council recognised that Mr C did not receive his SALT or OT provision throughout the time he attended the post-16 college. This was until February 2025 when the college excluded Mr C.
36. Mr C was then out of education for around a month, before he began attending a specialist school. In May 2025, the specialist school wrote to Miss B and confirmed that Mr C would shortly begin receiving SALT from a therapist working with pupils in his year group.
37. The Council issued Mr C with an updated EHC Plan in May 2025 naming the specialist school. It left unchanged from the previous version those parts of Section F which set out his SALT and OT provision.

Miss B’s complaint and Council responses

38. In September 2024 Miss B complained to the Council that Mr C had not received any of his SALT provision detailed in successive EHC Plans, including in college. The Council’s first reply, sent in October 2024, said the college had put SALT in place for Mr C. But it also noted Mr C’s Plan had fallen due for a review in November 2024 and said discussion of his need could form part of that review.
39. In January 2025 Miss B complained again that Mr C had not received SALT. In February 2025 the Council wrote back and said he had received ‘targeted and universal’ SALT and OT from the post-16 college. However, it recognised this was not the same as the provision specified in Mr C’s EHC Plan. The Council accepted it was at fault for not making that specific provision and offered Miss B a symbolic payment of £400 in recognition of the impact of this lack of provision.
40. Miss B escalated her complaint, saying Mr C had now been without the SALT identified in his EHC Plan for several years.
41. In June 2025 the Council provided its final reply to Miss B. It recognised again that Mr C had not received SALT since beginning college although his new school had now put a programme in place for him to do so. It offered Miss B a symbolic payment of £800 in recognition of the impact of Mr C not having that provision.

My findings

42. I noted the Council had accepted being at fault here. As I explained above, once a council has provided a child or young person with an EHC Plan it has a duty to ensure they receive the education provision specified in their Plan. In Mr C’s case, after he began attending college in Autumn 2023 he should have received SALT and OT as part of his provision. But he did not.
43. I found no suggestion that either provision had begun significantly before Miss B complained to us in June 2025, despite Mr C having changed education placement by that time. So, for around five and a half terms, or throughout most of the 2023-24 and 2024-25 academic years, Mr C went without provision integral to meeting his special educational needs.
44. In considering the consequence of that fault, I noted the lack of this therapy had not prevented Mr C attending his education placements. However, these therapies formed part of his overall education provision and so would contribute to his education outcomes. I accepted Miss B’s comment that not having this provision made it harder for Mr C to adapt to his environment as his social and communication needs impacted on his interaction with peers. I considered therefore Mr C suffered an injustice by not having these therapeutic provisions.
45. In considering how the Council should remedy this injustice, I consulted the Ombudsman’s guidance on remedies. This does not provide specific advice on remedying a loss of therapeutic provision where, as in this case, it does not form part of a wider loss of education provision. So, I used my discretion to propose a remedy using a tariff of £300 per term (or £100 a month) for each therapeutic provision over five and a half terms. This took account also of the extent of therapeutic provision Mr C should have received each term.
46. I noted Miss B’s complaint had focused on the impact of Mr C not having SALT. However, I saw no reason to adopt a different approach to the lack of OT he received, as both were integral to his EHC Plan.

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Agreed Action

47. The Council accepted the findings set out above. It agreed that within 20 working days of a decision on this complaint, it would provide a remedy for Mr C’s injustice, comprising:
1. an apology, which it would give to Miss B and Mr C, accepting the findings of this investigation. Our guidance on remedies sets out our expectations for how organisations should apologise effectively to remedy injustice. The Council agreed to consider this guidance when making its apology;
2. a symbolic payment, payable to Mr C, of £3300, in line with the explanation at paragraph 45 above. This payment would replace those offered by the Council previously and was not in addition to those. So, if Miss B had accepted earlier offers of payment made by the Council, then it could adjust the balance owing to Mr C, to take account of this.
48. I did not recommend any review of Mr C’s therapeutic provisions, nor any additional therapy to make up for that which he did not receive between September 2023 and June 2025. This was because of the evidence suggesting Mr C’s SALT was due to recommence from around June 2025. Given his school’s familiarity with Mr C’s Plan, I assumed also it had arranged for his OT. I expected both providers to contribute to Mr C’s next annual review, which would fall due within two to three months of this decision. I considered the review the most appropriate forum to consider Mr C’s need for these ongoing therapies, or the extent of his need. The review would then contribute to any decision by the Council to maintain, amend or cease Mr C’s Plan. And whatever the Council decided at that point, Mr C (with Miss B acting for him) would have the right to appeal if they considered the therapy provision in Mr C’s Plan inadequate.
49. However, I did want the Council to also consider what wider lessons it could learn from this complaint. In its complaint responses to Miss B, I did not find the reason why Mr C did not receive all the provision in his EHC Plan when at college. The Council had not explored with the college why it had not arranged that provision. Nor why its own officers had not picked up on Mr C missing that provision, or if they had, what they had done to try and remedy that. I had concern therefore that other young people attending this, or similar education settings, could find themselves in the same position as Mr C.
50. The Council agreed it would explore these matters further and write to us within three months of this final decision, to explain what it had concluded about the reasons why Mr C did not receive therapeutic provision while attending college including after it became aware of this. The Council agreed to tell us what action it had taken further to this study (or that it proposed to take), to try and prevent a repeat. This would include any wider learning for its officers that might involve consideration of other education institutions.
51. The Council agreed to provide us with evidence when it had complied with the above actions.

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Final Decision

52. For reasons set out above I upheld this complaint finding fault by the Council caused injustice to Mr C. The Council accepted these findings and agreed action that I considered would remedy that injustice. Consequently, I completed my investigation satisfied with its response.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman