Summary: Ms X complained the Council failed to complete the Education, Health and Care (EHC) assessment process and issue her son, Y’s, final EHC Plan within statutory timescales. She also complained it failed to provide appropriate alternative provision to Y. The Council was at fault. It did not complete the EHC assessment process and issue Y’s final EHC Plan within statutory timescales. It also delayed arranging alternative provision for Y and did not appropriately evidence how it considered the amount of provision it offered was suitable. Because of the fault, Ms X suffered uncertainty and a frustrated right of appeal. Y also missed out on provision. The Council will make symbolic payments.

The complaint

1. Ms X complains the Council:
• failed in its section 19 duty to provide timely and full-time alternative education to her son, who I will refer to as Y, when he stopped attending school;
• claimed it was unaware Y was out of school despite the school saying it informed the Council of such; and
• failed to complete the Education, Health and Care (EHC) needs assessment and issue the final EHC Plan within statutory timescales.
2. Ms X says she feels discriminated by the Council, and as a result of its actions, says she has suffered distress and frustration. She says her and Y’s mental health have been negatively impacted, as well as Y’s education.
3. Ms X would like the Council to apologise and take accountability for its failings, pay a financial remedy, and train staff to prevent similar failings in future.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

4. 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 future we may recommend a remedy. (Local Government Act 1974, sections 26(1) and 26A(1), 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. 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. We cannot investigate most complaints about what happens in schools. (Local Government Act 1974, Schedule 5, paragraph 5(2), 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 have and have not investigated

10. I have investigated matters in this case from September 2024, 12 months before Ms X brought her complaint to us, to mid-November 2025 when the Council issued a final EHC Plan for Y. I reference matters outside of these dates for context.
11. Ms X had a right of appeal to the SEND Tribunal in mid-November 2025 when the Council issued a final EHC Plan for Y. As such, I have not investigated matters after this point for the reason outlined in paragraph 6.
12. Ms X’s complaint to us included matters relating to the actions of Y’s school. I have not investigated any such matters for the reason outlined in paragraph 8.

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How I considered this complaint

13. I read Ms X’s complaint and spoke to her about it on the phone.
14. I considered evidence provided by Ms X and the Council as well as relevant law, policy and guidance.
15. Ms 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 Plan 

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 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. 

Timescales and process for EHC assessment 

17. 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. 
• 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);  

Advice and Information for EHC needs assessments

18. As part of the assessment, councils must gather advice from relevant professionals (SEND Regulation 6(1)). This includes psychological advice and information from an Educational Psychologist (EP).

Section 19 duty

19. Section 19 of the Education Act 1996 says that the council must arrange suitable alternative educational provision when it finds that a child is unable to attend school because of a permanent exclusion, an illness, or for any other reason which make the school inaccessible to the child. The alternative educational provision must be suitable to the child’s age, ability and aptitude, and any special educational needs they have.

Arranging person centred provision

20. 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.

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What happened

21. This is a summary of events outlining key facts and it does not include everything that has happened in this case.

EHC assessment process

22. Ms X sent her request for an EHC Plan for Y to the Council in early March 2025. The Council sent its decision to assess Y to Ms X around a month later, in early April 2025.
23. The Council received the EP report in early September 2025 and decided it would issue an EHC Plan for Y in mid-September 2025.
24. The Council issued Y’s draft EHC Plan later that month, and it issued the final EHC Plan in mid-November 2025.

Section 19 duty

25. For the period I have investigated, the Council says it was made aware of Y’s non-attendance in October 2024. In early November 2024, Y’s school requested support from the Council to re-engage Y with learning. The Council accepted the request and held a planning meeting in mid-December 2024. Y began home tuition sessions in mid-January 2025, for three and a half hours a week, for six weeks.
26. In late February 2025, the Council met with Ms X, and Y’s school, to discuss ways to engage Y with school and support his attendance. It met with Y’s school in early March 2025 to plan for Y’s reintegration to school, as the Council says Y’s engagement with the tuition had been successful. As such, Y’s tuition was due to end at the end of March 2025 as part of the plan for Y to return to school. Ms X spoke to the Council around this time and told it the plan for reintegration had not been successful.
27. As such, in April 2025, the Council considered its section 19 duty at the extended absence panel. The panel concluded an interim offer of tuition should be made to Y to support his gradual transition back to school. Ms X says Y received just over nine hours of tuition in June 2025, and just under six hours of tuition in July 2025. The Council concluded with this tuition offer, and the steps taken at school which included dedicated safe spaces, a personalised timetable and a small group environment, that the reintegration plan in place was appropriate and it had met its duty to provide an education.
28. This arrangement was not successful and Y’s reintegration to school was not achieved. As such, the Council told Ms X in July 2025 it would arrange tuition for Y, which would start at the beginning of the new term in September 2025. The tuition was initially for four hours a week, which gradually increased to six hours a week, and then eight hours a week, until mid-November 2025, where it reached 10 hours a week. Ms X was happy with this arrangement and Y engaged well with it. The tuition ended in April 2026 when Y started at a different school.

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Analysis

EHC assessment process

29. The statutory timeframe for completing an EHC needs assessment and issuing a final EHC Plan is 20 weeks. In this case, the process began in early March 2025 when Ms X requested an EHC Plan for Y. The Council issued its decision to assess Y within the six-week statutory timeframe. But there were delays after this, mainly due to the wait for the EP report. The Council should have issued Y’s final EHC Plan by late July 2025. But, it was issued in mid-November 2025. This is a delay of 16 weeks, or roughly just under four months.
30. We take the view councils must abide by the statutory and legislative requirements under the SEN legislation and guidance. The Council’s failure to meet the required timescales here was fault and has caused Ms X frustration and delayed her right of appeal to the Tribunal. Further, had the Council issued Y’s EHC Plan in line with statutory timescales, he would have had the EHC Plan in place earlier. Due to the delays, Y lost the opportunity to receive the support in his EHC Plan sooner. It has also caused uncertainty to Ms X about the provision Y would receive, and whether having this support in place sooner would have helped his engagement with learning.
31. We recognise the national shortage of EPs available to complete reports for EHC needs assessments, leading to delays in the rest of the EHC Plan process. Our current approach is to remedy the injustice caused by this by recommending a symbolic payment of £100 per month from the date the final EHC Plan should have been issued, to the date the Council received the EP report.
32. In response to my enquiries, the Council has offered £400 to acknowledge its EHC assessment delay and delay in issuing Y’s final EHC Plan. This is in line with our remedies guidance and our approach outlined above, and is appropriate to acknowledge the injustice caused by the EP related delay between late July 2025 when the final EHC Plan should have been issued, to early September 2025 when it received the EP report, and the remaining delay after this point up until mid-November 2025 when it issued the final EHC Plan.
33. I have not recommended the Council apologise to Ms X as it has already done so in its complaint response which is appropriate. I have also not made service improvement recommendations in this case. This is because the Council has an action plan to improve its SEND service and reduce its delays, and in relation to its section 19 oversight. We will continue to monitor the progress of the plan and identify any emerging trends through our casework and will make service improvement recommendations where appropriate.

Section 19 duty

34. The Council accepted a section 19 duty applied in November 2024 shortly after it became aware of Y’s attendance issues and the school requested support from the Council. It arranged tuition for Y, but this was not in place until mid-January 2025. The Council was aware Y was not attending school, so it knew he would not be receiving education until the tuition was put in place. The Council’s delay in putting the tuition in place was fault, which it has acknowledged.
35. There was also a further delay. The Council decided at panel in April 2025 an interim offer of tuition should be made to Y to support his gradual transition back to school. But Y received this tuition in June and July 2025. Y was struggling to reengage with school, which the Council was aware of. So, between the panel decision in April 2025 that an interim offer of tuition should be made to Y, and when the tuition was in place in June 2025, Y was not receiving an education. So, this further delay in putting tuition in place was also fault.
36. Further, the Council has not evidenced how it reached its decision about how many hours of tuition to offer Y and why such amount would be suitable for him. Full-time education is not defined but is commonly held to be equivalent to between 22 and 25 hours a week, depending on the age of the child. However, if a Council is arranging one-to-one tuition, fewer hours may be appropriate, given the increased intensity of learning.
37. In this case, Y received 21 hours of tuition across six weeks starting in January 2025, so around three and a half hours a week, and around 15 hours of tuition across two months, in June and July 2025. This does not amount to a full-time education. So, the Council’s failure to appropriately evidence how it decided this amount of tuition would be suitable for Y, given his difficulties in accessing education at school as part of the reintegration plan, causes uncertainty about whether Y would have been able to engage with more provision. I have made a recommendation to reflect this. However, I consider the gradual increase of tuition hours arranged for Y in September 2025 was appropriate, and he engaged well with this.
38. Sometimes we will recommend a financial payment to the person who brought their complaint to us. This might be to reimburse a person who has suffered a quantifiable financial loss, or it might be more of a symbolic payment which serves as an acknowledgement of the distress or difficulties they have been put through. But our remedies are not intended to be punitive and we do not award compensation in the way a court might. Nor do we calculate a financial remedy based on what the cost of the service would have been to the provider.
39. We have published guidance to explain how we calculate remedies for people who have suffered injustice because of fault by a council. Our primary aim is to put people back in the position they would have been in if the fault by the council had not occurred.
40. When a young person has missed education because of fault by a council, we may recommend the council make a symbolic payment to acknowledge the education they have missed and help them to catch up. We usually recommend a payment of between £900 and £2,400 per term to acknowledge the impact of that loss. In determining an appropriate level we will take account of factors such as the severity of the young person’s SEND as set out in the EHC Plan, any educational provision that was made during the period and whether the period affected was a significant one in a young person’s school career.
41. The Council has acknowledged the missed education caused by its delay in arranging Y’s tuition and has offered £700 to remedy this. I welcome this offer, however, given the circumstances of this case, a higher payment would be appropriate. I have made a recommendation to reflect this.

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Action

42. To remedy the outstanding injustice caused to Ms X and Y by the fault I have identified, the Council will take the following actions within four weeks of my final decision:
• If it has not already done so, pay Ms X the £400 it has offered to acknowledge her delayed right of appeal caused by the Council’s delays in the EHC assessment process and the issuing of the final EHC Plan.
• Pay Ms X £900 to acknowledge the education Y missed caused by the Council’s delays in it arranging the alternative provision for Y, as outlined in paragraphs 34 and 35. This has been calculated at £900 per term of missed education.
• Pay Ms X £300 to acknowledge the uncertainty caused to her by the identified fault outlined in paragraphs 30 and 37.
43. The Council should provide us with evidence it has complied with the above actions.

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Decision

44. I uphold Ms X’s complaint and find fault causing injustice. The Council has agreed actions to remedy injustice.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman