Summary: Miss X complained the Council failed to complete an Education, Health and Care needs assessment for Y within statutory time limits, and failed to put alternative provision in place while he was out of school. The Council was at fault, causing frustration and uncertainty. The Council has agreed to apologise, make a payment to reflect the injustice and act to prevent recurrence.

The complaint

1. Miss X complains the Council failed to complete an Education, Health and Care (EHC) needs assessment and issue a final EHC Plan for her son, Y within statutory time limits and failed to make suitable alternative provision available to him after he was excluded from school in April 2025. Miss X also says the Council failed to make reasonable adjustments to the way it communicates with her. As a result, Miss X says Y missed out on education he was entitled to and she has been caused real distress.

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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. We cannot investigate a complaint if someone has appealed to a tribunal about the same matter. We also cannot investigate a complaint if in doing so we would overlap with the role of a tribunal to decide something which has been or could have been referred to it to resolve using its own powers. (Local Government Act 1974, section 26(6)(a), as amended)
5. 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.
6. Due to the restrictions on our powers to investigate where there is an appeal right, there will be cases where there has been past injustice which neither we, nor the Tribunal, can remedy. The courts have found that the fact a complainant will be left without a remedy does not mean we can investigate a complaint. (R (ER) v Commissioner for Local Administration, ex parte Field) 1999 EWHC 754 (Admin). 
7. 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)
8. 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

9. The Local Government Act 1974 sets out our powers but also imposes restrictions on what we can investigate.
10. We cannot usually investigate complaints about events that took place more than 12 months before they were brought to the Ombudsman. We can only exercise discretion to look back further if there are good reasons to do so.
11. Miss X first brought her complaint to the Ombudsman in October 2025, meaning events that took place before October 2024 have been raised late. However, as the delay in raising a complaint was due to the Council not completing Y’s EHC needs assessment when it should have done, I have exercised discretion to look back to July 2024 when the Council agreed to complete an EHC needs assessment.
12. I have investigated up to the point the Council issued Y’s final EHC Plan in January 2026.
13. Any mention below to events that took place before July 2024 or after January 2026 are for reference only.

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How I considered this complaint

14. I considered evidence provided by Miss X and the Council as well as relevant law, policy and guidance.
15. 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

EHC needs assessment

16. A child or young person with special educational needs (SEN) 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. 
17. On receiving a request for an EHC needs assessment, a council must decide whether an assessment is necessary. As part of an EHC needs assessment, a council must seek advice from the parent, head teacher of the school, and from any other professionals, including an Educational Psychologist (EP).
18. 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 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 a Council decides to assess a child’s EHC needs, they must gather information from relevant professionals, who must respond within six weeks;
• If the Council decides not to issue an EHC Plan, it must explain this within 16 weeks from the date of the request.
• If it decides to issue an EHC Plan, the Council must then send a draft plan to the child’s parents, giving them 15 days to comment; and
• 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.
19. 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).

Section 19 duty

20. Councils must arrange suitable education at school or elsewhere for pupils who are out of school because of exclusion, illness or for other reasons, if they would not receive suitable education without such arrangements. [The provision generally should be full-time unless it is not in the child’s interests.] (Education Act 1996, section 19). We refer to this as section 19 or alternative education provision.
21. This applies to all children of compulsory school age living in the local council area, whether or not they are on the roll of a school. (Statutory guidance ‘Alternative Provision’ January 2013)
22. If the council decides it must arrange alternative provision, it needs to arrange provision based on the child’s individual needs. It should also 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 the reason for their non-attendance is medical. When this happens, the Council should provide reasons for the amount of provision it arranges.
23. We have issued guidance on how we expect councils to fulfil their responsibilities to provide education for children who, for whatever reason, do not attend school full-time. Out of school, out of sight? published July 2022
24. Where councils arrange for schools or other bodies to carry out their functions on their behalf, the council remains responsible. Therefore, councils should retain oversight and control to ensure their duties are properly fulfilled.

Reasonable adjustments

25. The Equality Act 2010 provides a legal framework to protect the rights of individuals and advance equality of opportunity for all. It offers protection, in employment, education, the provision of goods and services, housing, transport and the carrying out of public functions.
26. We cannot decide if an organisation has breached the Equality Act as this can only be done by the courts. But we can make decisions about whether or not an organisation has properly taken account of an individual’s rights in its treatment of them.
27. The reasonable adjustment duty is set out in the Equality Act 2010 and applies to any body which carries out a public function. It aims to make sure that a disabled person can use a service as close as it is reasonably possible to get to the standard usually offered to non-disabled people.
28. Service providers are under a positive and proactive duty to take steps to remove or prevent obstacles to accessing their service. If the adjustments are reasonable, they must make them.

What happened

29. I have summarised below some key events leading to Miss X’s complaint. While I have considered everything said and submitted, this is not intended to be a detailed account of what took place.
30. Y lives with Miss X, separately from his father Mr Z. Y had been attending School A but a request had been made to the Council to complete an EHC needs assessment for him. The Council has said Mr Z’s address was listed on the documentation.
31. On 18 July 2024 the Council wrote to Miss X to confirm it would complete an EHC needs assessment for Y.
32. In November 2024 Y was assessed by an EP as part of the assessment process.
33. On 5 December 2024 the Council missed the 20-week deadline to complete the EHC needs assessment and issue an EHC Plan for Y.
34. In March 2025 the Council issued a draft EHC Plan for Y.
35. In April 2025, Y was permanently excluded from School A and the Council arranged for him to begin receiving daily home tuition. The Council also began consulting with new school settings.
36. In July 2025 the Council has said discussions with Y’s family identified that he resided with Miss X, not Mr Z, and so it had sent consultations to schools in the wrong area. The Council arranged consultations for schools in Miss X’s area. During this time, Y remained out of school and accessing tuition.
37. Miss X informed the Council she did not believe the draft EHC Plan accurately reflected Y’s current needs which had changed following the EP assessment and subsequent exclusion.
38. In August 2025, Miss X provided her comments on the draft EHC Plan and said she had not yet decided on her preference of educational placement.
39. In October 2025 the Council informed School B it intended to name it on Y’s final EHC Plan and direct it to admit him. However the school appealed against this decision and the Council agreed to consult with other schools.
40. In December 2025 Miss X expressed a preference for School C be named on Y’s EHC Plan.
41. The Council issued a final EHC Plan for Y on 7 January 2026, naming School C.
42. In response to our enquiries the Council explained the delays in issuing a final EHC Plan for Y were due to a number of factors, including uncertainty around Y’s primary residence, changing parental preferences, concerns about accuracy following Y’s exclusion, and schools refusing to offer Y a place. The Council also confirmed there is no evidence it kept the package of alternative provision under review during the period I have investigated.
43. The Council has said in an email of 18 July 2024 it asked Miss X about her preferred method of communication and whether emails would be acceptable, to which Miss X responded that email would be fine so it proceeded on this basis. However, when Miss X subsequently informed it she struggled to manage large amounts of written information, it adapted its approach to use telephone contact. While some email contact was necessary, the Council said it made efforts to supplement this with direct telephone contact.

Analysis

44. The Council initially agreed to assess Y’s EHC needs on 18 July 2024. The Council informed Mrs X it would complete an EHC needs assessments and set out the next steps but missed the deadline by which to decide whether it would issue an EHC Plan for Y. This is fault and caused uncertainty for Mrs X and Y, which is injustice.
45. If the Council had completed the EHC needs assessment in line with statutory time limits, Y’s EHC Plan would have been finalised by 5 December 2024. However, the Council did not finalise Y’s EHC Plan until 7 January 2026, around 13 months after the deadline to do so. This is a considerable delay which caused significant uncertainty and frustration for Miss X, as well as frustrating her rights to appeal to the Tribunal. The delay also created uncertainty around whether Y was missing out on special educational provision he would have been entitled to between December 2024 and January 2026. This is injustice.
46. The Council has explained it has already implemented a new process which has brought down the waiting time for completion of EHC needs assessments, so I do not make any service improvement remedy here. However, I find the Council ought to make a personal remedy to Miss X, which is set out below.
47. From April 2025 Y was permanently excluded from School A. From that point the Council was under a Section 19 duty to arrange suitable alternative education for him. This process is separable from the EHC needs assessment process.
48. The Council arranged tuition for Y on a part time basis from the time he was excluded. While provision does not need to be full time, where the Council decides this is the case it should provide reasons for the amount of provision it arranges. I have seen no evidence of how the Council assessed what level of education was suitable for Y when deciding what provision to put in place. This amounts to fault and creates uncertainty around whether the provision was suitable for Y, which is injustice.
49. The Council has also confirmed there is no evidence to show how it reviewed the package of alternative provision to ensure it remained suitable for Y across the period I have looked at. This is further fault and creates further uncertainty around whether Y was receiving alternative provision that was suitable for his needs between April 2025 and January 2026, which is injustice.
50. Miss X has said the Council failed to make reasonable adjustments to the way it communicated with her to account for her individual needs. The Council has said this is not the case and it confirmed email contact was acceptable before adapting its approach when Miss X informed it she struggled with large volumes of written text.
51. When considering complaints, if there is a conflict of testimony or evidence, we make findings based on the balance of probabilities. This means weighing up the available relevant evidence and basing our findings on what we think was more likely to have happened. Sometimes it is not possible to come to a finding, even on the balance of probabilities, where there is no independent evidence and both sides have differing views on the same events.
52. In this case, I have seen no evidence to allow me to make a finding even on the balance of probabilities that the Council failed to make reasonable adjustments to the way it communicated with Miss X.

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Action

53. To address the injustice identified above, the Council should carry out the following actions within one month:
• Provide Miss X with a written apology for the injustice caused by the failure to complete Y’s EHC needs assessment within the statutory time limits and the failure to evidence how it considered its duty to implement Section 19 support for Y and keep this under review. We publish guidance on remedies which sets out our expectations for how organisations should apologise effectively to remedy injustice. The organisation should consider this guidance in making the apology I have recommended in my findings;
• Pay Miss X the £500 in recognition of the delays in completing Y’s EHC needs assessment and issuing a final EHC Plan for him.
• Pay Miss X £900 in recognition of the uncertainty caused by the Council’s failure to provide evidence of its consideration of its Section 19 duty to make suitable alternative provision available for Y between April 2025 and January 2026 and keep this under review.
• Remind staff of its duties under law and guidance to consider what alternative provision is suitable when a child of statutory school age is out of school, the duty to keep this under review, and the duty to keep evidentiary notes of the decision-making. The council should share a copy of our focus report ‘Out of school…. Out of sight?’ and our final decision with the reminder.
54. The Council should provide us with evidence it has complied with the above actions.

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Decision

55. I find fault causing injustice. The Council has agreed actions to remedy injustice.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman