The Ombudsman's final decision
Summary: Miss X complained the Council delayed finalising her son’s Education, Health and Care plan. The Council was at fault. It caused a delay of five months. This likely meant her son missed out on some support that he needed and her right to appeal was frustrated. The Council has agreed to take action to address their injustice.
The complaint
Miss X complains the Council delayed finalising her son, Y’s Education, Health and Care (EHC) plan. She says this has caused her stress and delayed Y receiving the help he needs. She also wants to understand how this situation was allowed to occur.
The Ombudsman’s role and powers
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) The law says we cannot normally investigate a complaint unless we are satisfied the organisation knows about the complaint and has had an opportunity to investigate and reply. However, we may decide to investigate if we consider it would be unreasonable to notify the organisation of the complaint and give it an opportunity to investigate and reply. (Local Government Act 1974, section 26(5), section 34(B)6) 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) Under our information sharing agreement, we will share this decision with the Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills (Ofsted).
What I have and have not investigated After my investigation began, Miss X raised further concerns about more recent events, including the Council not responding to her communications and declining her request for a meeting. As Miss X has not yet raised these issues formally with the Council and given it the opportunity to resolve them, I have not investigated these matters. I consider them to be premature complaints.
How I considered this complaint
I considered evidence provided by Miss X and the Council as well as relevant law, policy and guidance.
Miss X and the Council had the opportunity to comment on my draft decision. I considered any comments before making a final decision.
What I found
Statutory guidance A child with special educational needs may have an education, health and care (EHC) plan. This document describes the arrangements which should be made to meet the child’s needs.
Statutory government guidance (the ‘SEND code of practice’) says that, within six weeks of receiving a request for an EHC needs assessment, the council must write to the child’s parent and tell them whether it will do an assessment.
If the council goes on to issue an EHC plan, the whole process (from the assessment request to the plan being issued) must take no more than 20 weeks.
In cases where a mediation agreement is reached, the Council must let the child’s parent know either within 10 weeks that they are not to issue a plan or send a finalised plan within 14 weeks of the agreement.
What happened Miss X asked the Council to assess Y for an EHC plan in July 2024. The Council started the assessment in August 2024.
In November 2024, the Council decided not to proceed with an EHC assessment. Mediation subsequently took place.
After mediation, in January 2025, the Council agreed to restart the assessment.
In April 2025, the Council agreed to issue an EHC plan.
Miss X complained to the Council about the delays in completing the assessment and the draft plan. The Council replied in May 2025.
The Council said the delay was partly because it could not get an Educational Psychologist assessment quickly enough. It also explained what it was doing to hire more Educational Psychologists to reduce delays.
Miss X escalated her complaint to Stage 2. The Council responded in June 2025, upholding her complaint and apologising for additional delays. It explained that some delays were linked to agency staffing issues and said it would review how to improve timescales for completing EHC plans.
The Council issued Y’s final EHC plan in August 2025.
As part of our enquiries, the Council told us it intended to offer Miss X £600 to acknowledge the delays and the service she received.
My findings
The statutory timescale for issuing EHC plans is clear and non-negotiable. The Council should have issued Y’s plan by April 2025. It did not do so until August 2025. This was a delay of five months, for which it was at fault.
The Council has explained the reason for the delay. I accept that there have been national problems recruiting educational psychologists to assess children’s special educational needs. However, this does not change the statutory timescale, or the injustice caused to Miss X and Y from the delay.
It is likely that, because of the delay to his EHC plan, Y will have missed out on some support, and Miss X will have suffered some inconvenience (not least from feeling she had to make a complaint to the Council and, subsequently, to us).
As the Council has now issued Y’s EHC plan and has taken steps to address the difficulties it faced in securing Educational Psychologist assessments, as set out in its complaint response. The only outstanding matter is for it to provide a symbolic remedy to Miss X on Y’s behalf.
I consider the Council’s proposed offer to be reasonable and consistent with our guidance on remedies.
Action
Within five weeks of the final decision, the Council has agreed to: Write to Miss X, apologising for the delay in issuing Y’s EHC plan. We publish guidance which sets out what we expect an effective apology to look like. The Council will consider this guidance when writing to Miss X.
Make the symbolic payment of £600 to Miss X, on Y’s behalf, to recognise that the Council’s delay in issuing Y’s EHC plan likely resulted in him missing some support over a five-month period, and to acknowledge the inconvenience caused to Miss X.
The Council will provide us with evidence it has done these things.
Decision The Council was at fault. This caused injustice to Miss X and Y, which the Council will now take action to address.
Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman