Summary: We will not investigate Mr X’s complaint about the review of his child’s Education, Health and Care Plan. This is because there is not enough evidence of fault by the Council.

The complaint

1. The complainant, whom I shall refer to as Mr X, complained about how the Council reviewed his child’s Education, Health and Care Plan (EHC Plan). Mr X says the Council failed to follow the SEN Code of practice and was slow to respond to his complaint.

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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. (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended, section 34(B))

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How I considered this complaint

3. I considered information provided by the complainant and the Council.
4. I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.

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My assessment

5. We will not start an investigation into Mr X’s complaint.
6. When a council reviews an EHC Plan it has four weeks to say if it will make amendments. The whole review process should take a maximum of 12 weeks. In this case the Council took longer than four weeks to tell Mr X if it would amend his child’s EHC Plan. But the Council did complete the whole process within 12 weeks. The Council has apologised for the delay in responding to Mr X’s complaint. Based on the evidence available there is not enough evidence of fault by the Council to warrant us investigating.

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Final decision

7. We will not investigate Mr X’s complaint because there is not enough evidence of fault.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman