Summary: Mrs X complains the Council did not properly deal with her daughter Y’s special educational needs, resulting in lost provision. The Council is at fault because it did not properly investigate Mrs X’s concerns and cannot be certain provision was delivered. Mrs X’s daughter suffered missed educational provision. The Council should apologise, make a symbolic payment to Mrs X and provide an action plan showing how it will demonstrate necessary oversight.

The complaint

1. The complainant, whom I shall refer to as Mrs X, complains the Council did not deal properly with her daughter Y’s education because:
• it failed to ensure the Section F provision in her daughter’s EHC Plan was being delivered between September 2025 and November 2025 and;
• its complaint handling was poor as it didn’t properly investigate her initial complaint at stage 1 and her MP was wrongly informed her complaint was still open after it had been closed.
2. Mrs X says her daughter has missed special educational needs provision.

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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 an injustice, we may suggest a remedy. (Local Government Act 1974, sections 26(1) and 26A(1), as amended)
4. 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(i), as amended)

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How I considered this complaint

5. I considered evidence provided by Mrs X and the Council as well as relevant law, policy and guidance.
6. Mrs 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

Law, guidance and policies

7. 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.
8. The EHC Plan is set out in sections which includes Section F: The special educational provision needed by the child or the young person. 
9. 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).
10. 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. 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 have systems in place to: 

• check the special educational provision is in place when a new or amended EHC Plan is issued or 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 that the provision is not in place at any time. 

What happened?

11. This is a brief chronology of key events. It does not contain everything I reviewed during my investigation.
12. Y was 14 years old and had an EHC Plan. The Council issued an updated EHC Plan for her in April 2025.
13. In July 2025 Mrs X complained to the Council that Y’s EHC Plan provision was not being fully implemented.
14. The Council responded to Mrs X’s complain in August during the summer holidays, saying it was not able to investigate at that time due to the holidays.
15. The Council exchanged emails with Y’s school about provision in early September 2025.
16. In October 2025, a meeting was held between Y’s school, her mother and the Council. The school said it would implement Y’s provision.
17. Mrs X emailed the Council soon afterwards detailing specific EHC Plan provision that was not made and escalated her complaint to stage 2 of the Council’s complaints procedure.
18. The Council sent its final complaint response to Mrs X in November 2025. It upheld her complaint that it did not respond to her stage 1 complaint, but did not uphold her complaint that special educational needs (SEN) provision had not been provided.
19. The school only began to record provision logs nearly two weeks later, after Mrs X said she intended to seek Judicial Review.

Analysis

20. In its response to my enquiries, the Council accepted:
• That it could find no evidence to show that it emailed Y’s school about Mrs X’s concerns;
• That its intention to consider how Y’s school had implemented her EHC Plan was materially different from evidencing that it actually did so.. It said, “the officer handling the case made an error here and didn’t investigate provision she tried to assuage the parent. The Council accepts that this matter was not handled appropriately. Unfortunately, the officer dealing with the case at the time made a fundamental error in their handling of the concerns raised. Rather than undertaking a full investigation into the provision, the officer sought to reassure the parent without first establishing all of the relevant facts. As a result, the concerns were not explored as thoroughly as they should have been, and the Council acknowledges that this fell below the standard of service that should have been provided.”
• That” its processes for investigating concerns that provision was not being delivered did not operate as they should and, as a result, failed to identify and address the issue at the appropriate time.”
• That it “cannot be certain that all of the provision specified in Section F of the EHCP was delivered in full between September and November 2025. This is because the monitoring and assurance processes in place at that time were not sufficiently robust to provide the Council with reliable oversight of the provision being delivered. As a result, whilst there is no evidence to confirm that the provision was not delivered, the Council is unable to provide assurance that all aspects of the Section F provision were consistently implemented throughout this period.”
21. I agree this was fault by the Council.
22. At the meeting in early October, the school would have said full provision had been made if that was the case, not that it would implement Y’s EHC Plan provision going forwards.
23. Mrs X was still complaining that specific provision had not been made at the end of October. Mrs X would not have continued to complain that provision was not being made if the school had implemented provision for Y in full.
24. There is no evidence that provision was made until logs started to be kept by the school 0n 17 November 2025.
25. The Council says, “a revised approach was introduced from November. This included the implementation of regular six-weekly monitoring meetings, together with the review of provision logs submitted by the setting. Oversight of these arrangements was provided by the Interim SEND Services Manager to ensure that concerns regarding the delivery of provision were identified and escalated appropriately.”
26. On the balance of probabilities, Y did not receive the full provision in her EHC Plan between September and 17 November 2025. Y suffered missed special educational needs provision for two and a half months, 10 weeks.

Ombudsman’s Guidance on Remedies

27. Where fault has resulted in a loss of educational provision, we will usually recommend a remedy payment of between £900 and £2,400 per term to acknowledge the impact of that loss. The figure should be based on the impact on the child and take account of factors such as:
• the child’s special educational needs;
• any educational provision – full-time or part-time, without some or all of the specified support – that was made during the period; and
• whether additional provision can now remedy some or all of the loss.
28. The symbolic payment is intended to remedy injustice caused to the child from missing provision, as well as the normal range of consequential injustice also caused to the family due to this fault, for example; the additional caring responsibilities that occur from a child being out of education and avoidable disruption to daily routine.
29. I have considered all the information available to me about Y, including that provided by Mrs X, when deciding on an appropriate remedy, including Y’s EHC Plan and the provision Mrs X says was not made.

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Action

30. To remedy the outstanding injustice caused by the fault I have identified, the Council should take the following action within 4 weeks of my final decision:
• Apologise to Mrs X and Y for the fault found. 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 Mrs X £1,500 in respect of missed special educational needs provision for a period September to mid-November 2025.
• Review the circumstances of this case and provide an action plan to ensure that it demonstrates at least the minimum appropriate oversight in gathering information to fulfil their legal duty as set out in paragraph 10.
31. The Council should provide us with evidence it has complied with the above actions.

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Decision

32. 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