Summary: We upheld a complaint the Council delayed in reviewing an Education, Health and Care Plan. It also failed to respond with enough urgency when alternative education provision for the complainant’s son broke down. This contributed to a loss of education provision during the 2024-25 academic year, which was an injustice. The Council has accepted these findings and agreed action to remedy that injustice and reflect further on how it might avoid a repeat of the fault.

The complaint

1. Miss X complained that over several years the Council failed to review an Education, Health and Care (EHC) Plan given to her son Y, who has special educational needs. She also complained the Council failed to ensure that Y had access to full-time education.
2. Miss X said this caused her stress and emotional exhaustion in caring for Y and in contacting the Council about his needs. She said the Council led her to feel ignored, and its actions damaged her trust in it. She explained that looking after Y had a significant impact on her daily life affecting her health, sleep patterns and ability to work.

Back to top

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. 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)
7. Under our information sharing agreement, we will share this decision with the Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills (Ofsted).

Back to top

What I did and did not investigate

8. I investigated events during the academic year September 2024 to July 2025 only. This was contrary to Miss X’s wishes because she asked us to also investigate events before this time. In particular, she asked us to consider that the Council had issued Y with an EHC Plan in 2022, but it had then failed to review it. in her complaint Miss X also expressed dissatisfaction with the education arrangements made for Y between 2019 and 2021.
9. However, Miss X did not complain to the Council until June 2025 and did not complain to us until August 2025, after the Council gave its final reply.
10. I did not find Miss X provided good reasons for not complaining sooner about Y’s education provision in 2019 or 2021. Nor the Council’s failure to review Y’s EHC Plan during the 2023-24 academic year (or earlier). I invited Miss X to explain why she did not complain sooner. She told me she had some additional needs and needed support when reviewing and responding to correspondence. She relied on a relative for this who was not always available and more recently used Artificial Intelligence to help her compose letters. I noted also that Miss X needed reasonable adjustments when dealing with this office and other organisations.
11. I accepted that Miss X therefore found it harder to complain. However, since the beginning of 2025 she had engaged in sometimes long and detailed communications with the Council. While I understood Miss X had support to frame that correspondence, the content did not suggest Miss X had any significantly impaired ability to make a complaint. The factors set out in paragraph 10 therefore did not outweigh that Miss X had waited between two and six years to complain about certain matters.
12. I also noted the timing of Miss X’s complaint to the Council coincided with specific events that led to Y's education arrangements breaking down. I was not persuaded therefore that Miss X had intended to make a complaint about the lack of a review of Y’s Plan, nor earlier events, before this happened.
13. I could not investigate events beyond July 2025, as Miss X had complained to this office before the start of the next academic year. We cannot investigate events that happen after someone complains to us. But I advised Miss X on her right to make a further complaint is she considered the Council at fault also for how it had met Y’s education needs during the 2025-26 academic year.

Back to top

How I considered this complaint

14. I considered evidence provided by Miss X and the Council. I also considered relevant law, policy and guidance.
15. I gave Miss X and the Council a draft version of this decision statement to comment on. I took account of any comments they made, or further evidence they provided, before putting this decision statement in its final format.

Back to top

What I found

Key Law & Guidance

16. A child or young person with special educational needs may have an Education, Health and Care (EHC) Plan. This document sets out the child’s needs and the arrangements to meet them.
17. The 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).
18. We accept it is not practical for councils to keep a ‘watching brief’ on whether schools and others are providing all the special educational provision in section F for every pupil with an EHC Plan. But we consider councils should be able to demonstrate appropriate oversight in gathering information to fulfil their legal duty. At a minimum we expect them to: 

• check that special educational provision is in place after issuing a new or amended EHC Plan or if there is a change in educational placement; 
• check the provision at least annually during the EHC review process; and 
• quickly investigate and act on complaints or concerns raised the provision is not in place. 

19. The council must review the EHC Plan at least once a year to make sure it remains current. The council must complete the review within 12 months of the first EHC Plan and within 12 months of later reviews. A review meeting must then take place. Following the review meeting the council must issue a decision to either amend, maintain or end the EHC Plan. This must happen within four weeks of the meeting. (Section 20(10) Special Educational Needs and Disability Regulations 2014 and SEN Code paragraph 9.176) 
20. The council must review and amend an EHC Plan in enough time before a child or young person moves between key phases of education. This allows planning for and, where necessary, commissioning of support and provision at the new institution. It must complete the review and any amendments by 15 February in the calendar year in which the child is due to transfer into or between school phases. A key phase of education includes when a child moves between their primary and secondary phase of education, between Years 6 and 7.
21. A council can also decide to complete a reassessment of a child or young person’s EHC Plan if it thinks this necessary. Where it does so, it has 14 weeks to issue the final EHC Plan from the date it agreed to reassess to the date it issues the final amended EHC Plan.
22. In addition, Section 19 of the Education Act 1996 says the council must arrange suitable alternative educational provision when it finds that a child cannot attend school because of:

• a permanent exclusion;
• an illness; or
• any other reason making the school inaccessible.

23. The alternative educational provision must be suitable to the child’s age, ability and aptitude, and any special educational needs they have. The Council should have a review process to ensure the provision remains in the child’s best interests. Councils can decide a child cannot cope with full-time provision, especially where medical reasons cause their absence.
24. If a child has an EHC Plan the council also has an ongoing duty to arrange the support guaranteed by the Plan. However, this might not always be possible, for example when a Plan details SEN support specific to a normal classroom setting.

The key facts

25. In September 2024, Y began Year 6 of his education. He has special educational needs, and he had an EHC Plan issued in 2022. This said Y would receive education other than at school. However, the Plan described Y receiving education provision in a classroom setting. As part of his provision, the Plan said Y would receive a daily speech and language programme from “staff trained by a Speech and Language Therapist”. He would also take part in daily activities as recommended by an occupational therapist.
26. Y received education from an alternative education provider. He received one-to-one teaching away from his home in a community centre. He received six hours tuition a week, in three sessions of two hours each.
27. In November 2024 the Council consulted Miss X on whether she had any preference for Y’s secondary education. She replied that she did not want Y enrolled in a “traditional school”. She said he received education at home and support from the alternative provider. Miss X did not suggest dissatisfaction with these arrangements, although she said she was open to looking at different alternative providers.
28. In February 2025 the alternative education provider decided to withdraw from teaching Y. It contacted the Council to say Miss X had asked it to change the hours in which it taught Y, but it could not do this. It also said that personal relations between a key member of its staff and Miss X had broken down.
29. I asked the Council how it had checked Y’s education progress while he received teaching from the alternative provider. It did not provide comment but sent me copies of quarterly updates it received from the provider between March 2024 and March 2025. These did not suggest the alternative provider had any concerns about the provision it made for Y, nor that Miss X had any dissatisfaction with its service.
30. After the alternative provider gave notice, Y’s caseworker, Officer A, contacted Miss X asking to arrange a review of Y’s EHC Plan. Miss X did not agree to this saying she was taking legal advice over the education provider’s decision. In response, the Council said it had a duty to provide Y’s education and so it would “be proceeding with further referrals to individual tuition companies”.
31. The next substantive correspondence on the Council’s records dates from May 2026. Miss X contacted Officer A wanting to know what plans the Council had made for Y’s education moving forward.
32. Officer A again said she wanted to arrange a review of Y’s EHC Plan. Officer A said she had arranged “to refer” Y’s case to other tuition providers.
33. Miss X wrote back to say she no longer wanted Officer A dealing with Y’s case. She said she did want her to take any “further steps, reviews, amendments or referrals” in connection with Y’s case.
34. The Council agreed to change caseworker, and Officer B took over this role around mid-July 2025. Miss X asked him to arrange an annual review. She also asked him if the Council had put Y on a waiting list for a particular school (School #1). This followed the Council replying to her complaint, which I detail below. Miss X also asked what consultations the Council had carried out with other schools.
35. In his reply, Officer B recognised the Council had not reviewed Y’s Plan since 2022 and apologised for this. He said before he could complete a review he needed advice from an Education Psychologist. He confirmed the Council had last consulted a school (School #2) in 2023. He asked Miss X if she wanted him to consult any school moving forward.
36. Miss X replied that she wanted the review of Y’s education to proceed. She said she had not known of the consultation with School #2 in 2023. She also expressed dissatisfaction with the past service she had received from the Council.
37. Officer B continued to defer arranging an annual review, saying he wanted to wait for advice from an Education Psychologist first. He said he did not want the Council to consult potential education providers based on an outdated Plan. This ran the risk a school might wrongly say it could or could not meet Y’s needs in response to consultation.
38. By the end of July 2025, Officer B had not received a response from the Education Psychology service about when it might assess Y.
39. Meanwhile, the Council had offered some tuition for Y via another alternative education provider. Miss X declined this as the service proposed tuition in the home. Miss X said this was unsuitable for Y given his needs. She also said she could not be present while Y received tuition because of her own health needs.
40. During this investigation I found out that since July 2025 the Council had not completed its review of Y’s EHC Plan. In March and June 2026 it had issued draft versions of a revised Plan, but not a final version. I did not enquire to find out what arrangements the Council had made for Y’s education since July 2025, for the reasons set out in paragraph 13.

Miss X’s complaint

41. In June 2025 Miss X made a complaint to the Council. Her complaint included that the Council:

• had failed to review Y’s EHC Plan since 2022;
• had made inadequate and inappropriate arrangements for Y’s education at the community centre. She said Y was unsafe in the building and provision he received did not include: “therapies, targets, or support aligned with his EHC Plan”;
• put inappropriate pressure on her to accept tuition for Y at home.

42. Miss X said she wanted Y to have a new caseworker, a review of his EHC Plan, fresh consultations with relevant specialists and for the Council to provide him with a specialist school placement.
43. The Council gave its first reply to the complaint in July. It recognised that it had not reviewed Y’s Plan but pointed out Miss X had declined a review in February 2025. It said it had provided Y with therapeutic support when in school, but the therapists “could no longer stay actively involved” after he stopped attending. It said it had now assigned Y’s case to Officer B. Further that Y was on a waiting list for a specialist school (School #1).
44. Miss X was unhappy with this reply. She said the Council still had a duty to provide therapy provision for Y even though he was not in school. She wanted more detail about when Y went on the waiting list for School #1 and to know what other schools the Council had consulted.
45. The Council sent its final reply at the end of July 2025. It apologised for not arranging annual reviews of Y’s Plan and said it had undertaken a “significant reorganisation” of its EHCP service. It said this would provide for “clearer lines of accountability, improved tracking systems and strengthened oversight”. It said there had been no “formal consultation” of School #1, but an area manager in the service had thought it might be an appropriate setting for Y. It also provided details of earlier consultations carried out between 2019 and 2022.

My findings

46. I find that at the beginning of events covered by this investigation, September 2024, the Council’s education service was not maintaining effective oversight of Y’s case. He had an EHC Plan that was significantly out of date. It described him receiving education in a school setting, yet he had not been in school for several years. It listed therapeutic support as forming part of his education needs, but he was not receiving that. He was getting some education via an alternative provider at a community centre, but that fell far short of a full-time education. And while the alternative provider gave some updates to the Council on Y’s progress, I saw no evidence the Council scrutinised those nor reviewed how much tuition Y received.
47. The Council failed to ensure therefore that:

• it had scheduled any review of Y’s EHC Plan;
• it provided Y with a Plan that reflected the education he received outside a school setting;
• it monitored the education provision Y received to see if it could increase this to a full-time provision or equivalent.

48. This failure by the Council to keep on top of the routine management of Y’s case meant I had to find fault with it.
49. But also, I found that when Y’s education provision broke down the Council showed a lack of urgency to redress that. I considered the correspondence it sent Miss X in February 2025 struck the right tone. It stressed that it had a duty to Y to provide his education. Properly it said it needed to review Y’s Plan and search for an alternative provider. But the Council then failed to follow through on that commitment. By the end of May 2025, it continued to speak of planning to refer Y’s case to alternative providers, as opposed to having made such referrals. That was a fault.
50. I also considered the Council at fault for the approach taken in July 2025, after Miss X began asking it to review Y’s Plan. I understood why the Council said it needed advice from its Education Psychology service given how out of date Y’s Plan had become. But that implied that it effectively wanted to carry out a reassessment of Y’s needs, not a review.
51. Had it acknowledged this, I considered it might have helped focus the Council on the need to complete the reassessment in the statutory timescale of 14 weeks. It would also have led it to consider what other consultations it needed to undertake as part of the reassessment. This would have included formally consulting with Miss X and therapeutic services.
52. But instead the Council embarked instead on a confusing process of revisiting Y’s Plan that was neither a review nor a reassessment. That was a fault.
53. In considering the injustice caused to Y by these faults, I noted that before June 2025, there was no evidence Miss X wanted to complain about the Council’s management of Y’s case. She did not begin pushing it to review Y’s Plan before June 2025. And there is no evidence that while Y received education at the community centre that Miss X ever raised with the Council concerns about the suitability of that setting, or the extent of that provision.
54. If anything, Miss X discouraged the Council taking a greater interest in Y's education before May 2025. Her response to its contact in November 2024 asking about secondary school preferences indicated Miss X did not want greater involvement from the Council at that time. And when the arrangement with the alternative education provider broke down in February 2025, Miss X resisted the Council’s first attempt to arrange an annual review.
55. Further, Miss X frustrated the one effort the Council made to try and arrange for some alternative tuition for Y as an interim measure while it reviewed or reassessed his Plan. I found her argument that Y could not receive tuition at home inconsistent with what she told the Council some months previously when she referred to providing him education at home. But that said, the Council’s efforts to arrange any alternative provision for Y after his provision broke down in February 2025 were paltry.
56. So, after taking account of Miss X’s actions, I found the Council’s faults still caused Y injustice. I could not say that if the Council had better managed his case Y would have accessed full-time education given his needs. But I think it likely he would have received more provision, including access to any therapeutic service needed which the Council wrongly implied he might only receive in school. I considered the Council had to take the main share of responsibility for why Y had received only a fraction of the education provision he should have done during the 2024-25 academic year.
57. I recommended a series of actions I wanted the Council to take to remedy that injustice, which it agreed to. But before I set those out, I also considered the issue of consultation with schools. This arose following Miss X’s initial complaint, when the Council’s comment about consulting School #1 raised more questions than answers for her.
58. I found the Council was not clear in its first complaint response leading Miss X to believe that Y was on a waiting list for School #1 when this was not the case. Instead, the Council had it in mind School #1 might be suitable for Y and it intended to consult it at some point. But it kept no formal register of pupils in that position. With this confusion now resolved I did not consider the Council needed to take further action. As while its initial response fell short of best practice, I did not consider it so poor that I could make a finding of fault. Nor that Miss X had any unremedied injustice.
59. However, as part of my recommended actions I could not ignore that when I issued this decision Y still had an EHC Plan dated from 2022. As I explained above it has not been part of this investigation to explore why Y remained in that position throughout the 2025-26 academic year with no review or reassessment completing. Nor did I enquire to find out what education arrangements the Council made for him during the academic year. Those would have to be matters for another investigation, should Miss X pursue a complaint about them. But it was clearly an unremedied injustice for Y that he remained without an outdated EHC Plan long after it should have updated it.

Back to top

Agreed Action

Personal remedy for Miss X

60. Within 20 working days of this decision, the Council has agreed that it will:
1. provide an apology to Miss X accepting the findings of this investigation. We publish guidance on remedies which sets out our expectations for how organisations should apologise effectively to remedy injustice. The Council will consider this guidance when making its apology;
2. make a symbolic payment to Miss X of £4500. I explain how I calculated this payment in paragraphs 61-63;
3. issue Y with a final EHC Plan (if it has not already done so) further to the review / reassessment process it began in July 2025.
61. In recommending a symbolic payment in this case, I consulted the Ombudsman’s guidance on remedies. This suggests that where a child has lost education provision because of fault by the Council, we should adopt a tariff approach using a figure of between £900 and £2400 for each school term impacted. To decide the sum, we will consider:

• the age of the child;
• if the loss of provision was in whole or in part;
• whether it is likely but for the fault the child would have accessed full-time provision;
• the impact also on the child’s parent who complains.

62. In this case I took account that:

• Y was in Year 6, usually a pivotal year in a child’s education as they transfer from primary to secondary phase. However, Y had not been in school for some time and when asked in November 2024, Miss X did not express a wish for him to return to school;
• Y had some access to education between September 2024 and February 2025 but none after that to the end of the academic year;
• Y had received no therapeutic support throughout the 2024-25 academic year;
• the evidence suggested Y could not access full-time provision, given the limited alternative provision they accessed up to February 2025. Although balanced against this, I noted the Council’s failure to review Y’s provision meaning that it was possible Y could have coped with more than he did receive in this time.
• Miss X experienced distress following the breakdown of Y’s education.

63. I considered a sum of £1250 a term should apply for the period September 2024 to February 2025 (equivalent therefore to a term and a half). While the sum £1750 a term should apply for the period February to July 2025 (equivalent to another term and a half). The higher figure applied for the latter period as Y had no access to education in that time. That resulted in recommended payments of £1875 and £2625, making £4500 in total.

Service Improvements

64. I also wanted the Council to consider what wider lessons it could learn from this complaint. Its reply to Miss X’s complaint suggested that a reorganisation had reduced the chance of cases like Y’s being overlooked in the future. I welcomed that it spoke about having improved tracking of cases and strengthened oversight. By this I assumed that it would know when a review for a child not in school had become overdue.
65. But I considered the Council needed to be more specific in setting out how it would avoid the loss of oversight as happened in this case. Within two months of this decision it has agreed that it will write to us and explain:

• how it identifies cases where a review of an EHC Plan has become overdue. In particular, how it ensures it fulfils its responsibility to arrange such reviews where a child is not in an institutional education setting such as school or college. Does it assign a caseworker to all such cases and if so, what management supervision takes place;
• what oversight of a child or young person’s education takes place outside the annual review, where a child or young person has an EHC Plan and they receive less than full-time education;
• what expectation it puts on caseworkers to identify a new alternative education provider where alternative provision breaks down and what resources it gives them to help source this. What monitoring does the Council undertake of such cases and what management supervision takes place.

66. In writing to us, the Council will also advise of any further improvements it plans to make in respect of the matters listed in paragraph 65 and by when.
67. The Council will therefore provide us with evidence it has complied with the above actions and those in paragraph 60.

Back to top

Final Decision

68. For reasons set out above I upheld this complaint finding fault by the Council caused injustice to Miss X and Y. The Council has agreed action that I consider will remedy that injustice. So, I have completed my investigation satisfied with its response.

Back to top

Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman