Summary: We found fault with the Council delaying outside the statutory timescales in production of Miss X’s child’s Education, Health and Care Plan by just under one year and five months. The Council’s fault was in part caused by a delay in getting Educational Psychologist advice. The Council’s fault caused a delay to the delivery of Miss X’s child’s Education, Health and Care Plan provision and caused Miss X distress and frustration. The Council has agreed to apologise and make a symbolic payment to remedy the injustice caused.

The complaint

1. Miss X complained the Council failed to produce her child’s Education, Health and Care Plan within the statutory timescales.
2. Miss X says because of the Council’s delays, it has failed to put in place suitable provision for her child. Miss X says she had to pay for support herself and the lack of support by the Council meant her child missed suitable provision and placed a strain on herself and the family.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

3. 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)
4. 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)
5. 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)
6. Under our information sharing agreement, we will share this decision statement with the Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills (Ofsted).

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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 comments before making a final decision.

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What I found

Relevant law and guidance

EHC Plan

9. A child or young person with special educational needs may have an EHC Plan. This document sets out the child’s needs and what arrangements should be made to meet them. The EHC Plan is set out in sections. We cannot direct changes to the sections about their needs, education, or the name of the educational placement. Only the Tribunal or the council can do this. 
10. Statutory guidance ‘Special educational needs and disability code of practice: 0 to 25 years’ (‘the Code’) sets out the process for carrying out EHC assessments and producing EHC Plans. The guidance is based on the Children and Families Act 2014 and the SEN Regulations 2014. It says the following: 

• Where the council receives a request for an EHC needs assessment it must decide whether to agree to the assessment and send its decision to the parent of the child or the young person within six weeks. 
• The process of assessing needs and developing EHC Plans “must be carried out in a timely manner”. Steps must be completed as soon as practicable. 
• If the council goes on to carry out an assessment, it must decide whether to issue an EHC Plan or refuse to issue a Plan within 16 weeks.
• If the council goes on to issue an EHC Plan, the whole process from the point when an assessment is requested until the final EHC Plan is issued must take no more than 20 weeks (unless certain specific circumstances apply);  

11. As part of the assessment, councils must gather advice from relevant professionals (SEND Regulation 6(1)). This includes: 

• the child’s educational placement; 
• medical advice and information from health care professionals involved with the child; 
• psychological advice and information from an Educational Psychologist (EP); 
• social care advice and information; 
• advice and information from any person requested by the parent or young person, where the council considers it reasonable; and 
• any other advice and information the council considers appropriate for a satisfactory assessment. 

12. The council must not seek further advice if it already has advice and “the person providing the advice, the local authority and the child’s parent or the young person are all satisfied that it is sufficient for the assessment process”. In making this decision the council and the person providing the advice should ensure the advice remains current.  
13. Those consulted have a maximum of six weeks to provide the advice. 
14. The council may decide to seek additional advice, for example from an Occupational Therapist (OT) or Speech and Language Therapist (SALT), or the child’s parent or young person may request this. The council should decide if this is necessary based on the individual circumstances of the case.

What happened

15. In May 2024, Miss X made an Education, Health and Care Plan Needs Assessment request from the Council for her child, Y.
16. The Council agreed to assess Y for an EHC Plan in June 2024.
17. The Council assigned an Educational Psychologist to complete an assessment of Y in January 2025. Miss X had already sourced a private Educational Psychologist, who had met with Y to assess them, by this time. Miss X told the Council the Educational Psychologist would be completing their report imminently. The Council responded to request Miss X provides this report on receipt so it could decide if this was suitable for the EHC Plan.
18. At the end of January 2025, Miss X provided the private Educational Psychologist report to the Council. The Council’s Educational Psychologist team said this assessment was suitable and the Council agreed to use this report in production of Y’s EHC Plan in February 2025.
19. Miss X made a complaint to the Council in July 2025 about delays in production of Y’s EHC Plan. Miss X said Y was not receiving suitable support because of this. The Council acknowledged Miss X’s complaint two working days later and promised a response within 20 working days.
20. In August 2025, the Council sent a stage one complaint response to Miss X within the promised timescale. The Council said:
• It acknowledged Y’s EHC Plan Needs Assessment was taking longer than it should and upheld Miss X’s complaint.
• The reason for the delays with Y’s EHC Plan Needs Assessment was because of a lack of Educational Psychologist resources and an increase in demand for EHC Plans.
21. Miss X sought consideration of her complaint at stage two in September 2025. Miss X said the Council’s stage one response did not adequately address the significant delays beyond the statutory timescales. The Council acknowledged the stage two request four working days later and promised a response within ten working days.
22. In October 2025, the Council produced a stage two complaint response within the promised timescales. The Council said its stage one complaint response already upheld Miss X’s complaint and escalation to stage two would not speed up production of Y’s EHC Plan. The Council apologised for the delays.
23. Miss X sought consideration of her complaint at stage three. Miss X said:
• The Council had offered no effective remedy for the impact its fault caused.
• The Council’s delays were causing a strain on her family and she is experiencing anxiety and stress.
• She has been paying £80 a week for private support for Y because the Council had provided none.
• She paid £1,200 for the private Educational Psychologist assessment.
• She will need to pay extra monetary amounts for future support in the continued absence of an EHC Plan for Y.
24. The Council acknowledged the complaint and issued a stage three complaint response within its promised response time. The Council said:
• It apologised for the EHC Plan Needs Assessment delay.
• It was due to got to panel in December 2025 to decide whether to issue an EHC Plan for Y.
• It would pay Miss X £500 for the distress its delays had caused her.
• It was making service improvements to try to reduce the delays in production of EHC Plans for children.
• Miss X could approach the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman with her complaint.
25. At the start of December 2025, the Council agreed to issue an EHC Plan for Y and sent a draft EHC Plan to Miss X.
26. In March 2026, the Council produced a final EHC Plan for Y. This final EHC Plan used Miss X’s privately sourced Educational Psychologist report as the only Educational Psychologist advice. The Council also used Miss X’s Speech and Language Therapy reports but included a more up-to-date NHS Speech and Language Therapy report as well.

Analysis

27. Following Miss X’s request for an EHC Plan Needs Assessment for Y in May 2024, the Council had six weeks to decide whether to assess Y for an EHC Plan. The Council decided to assess Y within six weeks of Miss X’s request. The Council met the statutory timescales and I do not find fault.
28. The Council should have decided whether to issue an EHC Plan for Y in September 2024 and produced a final EHC Plan for Y in October 2024.
29. As part of Y’s EHC Plan Needs Assessment, the Council had a duty to get advice from relevant professionals; this included an Educational Psychologist. The Council could not get Educational Psychologist advice in time to decide to issue an EHC Plan for Y or produce Y’s final EHC Plan within the statutory timescales; this was a service failure. This service failure came about because of an increase in requests for EHC needs assessments and not enough Educational Psychologists to meet the demand. The Council’s failure to get its own Educational Psychologist advice caused it to delay for three and a half months outside the statutory timescales for production of Y’s EHC Plan. This would have caused Miss X distress, frustration and uncertainty.
30. The Council’s service failures meant Miss X needed to source a private Educational Psychologist assessment and report at her own expense. The Council has a statutory duty to get Educational Psychologist input as part of an EHC Plan needs assessment. The Council has accepted the private Educational Psychologist report and used this to write Y’s EHC Plan. Miss X has fulfilled the Council’s statutory duty causing her to incur costs when doing so.
31. While Miss X also provided Speech and Language Therapy reports for her child’s Education, Health and Care Plan, the Council had no statutory duty to get or use these reports. The Council has used these reports because Miss X made them available to it. The Council also used more up-to-date NHS Speech and Language Therapy reports to base Y’s EHC Plan on.
32. After the Council received the Educational Psychologist advice, the Council took too long to finalise Y’s EHC Plan. With Educational Psychologist advice available, the Council should have issued the final EHC Plan in less than eight weeks, taking account of the timescales set out in the Code. This includes time to:
• write a draft EHC Plan;
• issue it to the family and give them 15 days to consider the draft EHC plan and provide their comments; and
• 15 days for the education establishment to comment.
33. The overall guidance is that final plans should be issued as quickly as possible.
34. The Council was already outside the statutory timescales when it received the Educational Psychologist advice. The Council took a further one year and one month to finalise Y’s EHC Plan once it accepted the advice in February 2025. The Educational Psychologist’s recommendations are reflected in the Section F provision outlined in Y’s EHC Plan. This means the Council’s fault directly caused a delay of one year and one month to Y receiving the provision in their EHC Plan, in addition to the three and a half months identified in paragraph 29, creating a total delay exceeding one year and four months.

Service improvements

35. The Ombudsman is aware that Cambridgeshire Council is currently undergoing a significant transformation programme for its SEND services following previous recommendations from the Ombudsman. The Council is undertaking improvements to its adherence to EHC Plan review timescales, notably in relation to delays with Educational Psychologists. The ongoing actions by the Council directly cross-over with the issues identified in this case. For this reason, I am not making any service improvements.

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Action

36. Within one month of the Ombudsman’s final decision the Council will:
1. Pay Miss X £350 to acknowledge the distress, frustration and uncertainty caused to her by the Council’s three and a half month delay in issuing Y with an Education, Health and Care Plan caused by the delay in obtaining advice from an Educational Psychologist;
2. Reimburse Miss X for the cost of the private Educational Psychologist assessment and report the Council used to produce her child’s Education, Health and Care Plan in March 2026; and
3. Pay Miss X £2,850 to recognise Miss X’s child’s loss of opportunity to receive provision in line with their Education, Health and Care Plan between February 2025 and March 2026 caused by the delay in issuing the final Education, Health and Care Plan after it had obtained Educational Psychologist advice.
37. The Council should provide us with evidence it has complied with the above actions.

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Decision

38. There was fault leading to injustice. As the Council has agreed to my recommendations, I have completed my investigation.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman