Summary: Miss X complained of the Council’s delay in completing the assessment for and issuing her son’s Education, Health and Care Plan. We found fault because there was a significant delay in issuing the plan. This caused avoidable distress and uncertainty for Miss X and meant her son’s plan was issued later than it should have been. To remedy the injustice caused the Council has agreed to apologise and make a payment to her.

The complaint

1. Miss X complains the Council took too long to complete the Education, Health and Care (EHC) Plan needs assessment for her son, Y, which meant the final plan was then issued outside of statutory timescales.
2. Miss X says this has caused her distress and frustration.

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. Service failure can happen when an organisation fails to provide a service as it should have done because of circumstances outside its control. We do not need to show any blame, intent, flawed policy or process, or bad faith by an organisation to say service failure (fault) has occurred. (Local Government Act 1974, sections 26(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)
5. 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

How I considered this complaint

6. I have considered all the information Miss X provided and discussed this complaint with her. I have also considered information sent to us by the Council.
7. Miss X and the Council had the opportunity to comment on my draft decision. I have taken any comments received into consideration before reaching my final decision.

Back to top

What I found

Special educational needs

8. A child with special educational needs (SEN) may have an EHC Plan. This sets out the child’s needs and what arrangements should be made to meet them.

Timescales and process for EHC Plan assessment

9. Statutory guidance ‘Special educational needs and disability (SEND) 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 decides not to conduct an EHC needs assessment, it must give the child’s parent or young person information about their right to appeal to the SEND Tribunal;
• 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; and
• 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).

What happened

10. I have set out below a summary of the key events. This is not meant to show everything that happened.
11. Miss X has a young son, Y. In mid-March 2025, Miss X asked the Council to carry out an EHC needs assessment (the assessment) on Y. The assessment would help to decide if he needed an EHC Plan.
12. In mid-April 2025, the Council agreed to carry out the assessment on Y. As is normal practice, the Council requested information on Y and his needs, from various professionals. This included a report from an Educational Psychologist (EP). Reports were due back by the end of May 2025.
13. At the beginning of October 2025, Miss X complained to the Council. She was unhappy that the Council had gone over the statutory 20-week deadline to issue an EHC Plan for Y.
14. The Council sent its stage one complaint response to Miss X towards the end of the month. The Council’s letter included a hyperlink to its website where it acknowledged that EHC needs assessments were routinely delayed. It upheld her complaint and apologised that she had not yet received a draft or a final plan. The letter said delays were because it was still waiting for Y’s EP report as part of the assessment. The Council explained the increase in requests for EHC needs assessments and that there was a national shortage of EPs to carry out reports for EHC Plans.
15. The Council explained the steps it was taking to tackle the problem which included using associate and locum EPs to counter the backlog. The Council said when it received the report, it would decide whether to issue Y with an EHC Plan. It also said Miss X could contact it and it would consider the delay and whether a financial remedy was appropriate for her.
16. Miss X escalated her complaint to stage two of the Council’s complaint process and the Council replied in mid-November 2025. The Council repeated the information from its stage one response but committed to allocating Y’s case to an EP by the end of January 2026. It signposted Miss X to the Ombudsman.
17. The Council issued Y’s plan in mid-March 2026. Miss X has confirmed to me that she has not approached the Council for any consideration of financial remedy linked to the delay.

Analysis

EHC Plan needs assessment process

18. Statutory timescales state that from beginning to end, the EHC needs assessment process and any EHC Plan resulting from this should take no more than 20 weeks to complete. Y’s 20-week deadline was early August 2025.
19. The Council issued Y’s plan in mid-March 2026 which was seven and a half months late.
20. Whilst I acknowledge the difficulties in securing an EP, this still led to a significantly delayed first Final EHC Plan. In the circumstances of this complaint, not issuing the plan within statutory timescales is sufficient for me to make a finding of service failure. This led to avoidable delay, uncertainty and distress for Miss X and meant her appeal right for the eventual plan was delayed. It meant Y’s plan was issued later than it should have been.
21. The Ombudsman recognises 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 EHC Plan should have been issued to when it was. On this basis, I have made a recommendation below to remedy the injustice caused to Miss X.
22. The Council already has an action plan in place related to EP report delays and how to tackle this. On this basis, I make no service improvement recommendations here.

Back to top

Agreed action

23. To remedy the injustice caused by the faults I have identified, the Council has agreed to take the following action within four weeks of the date of my final decision:
• apologise to Miss X for the injustice caused by the delay in issuing Y’s first Final EHC Plan; and
• make a symbolic payment to Miss X of £750 to reflect the distress and uncertainty caused by the delay in issuing the eventual plan and to recognise the delay in the EHC Plan process itself.
24. The apology written should be in line with the Ombudsman’s guidance on remedies on making an effective apology.
25. Payments made are in line with the Ombudsman’s guidance.
26. The Council should provide us with evidence it has complied with the above actions.

Back to top

Final decision

27. I have now completed my investigation. I uphold this complaint with a finding of fault causing an injustice.

Back to top

Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman