EHCP delays: the national picture and what you can do

How common are EHCP delays?

Very. In 2024, fewer than half of new EHC plans in England were issued within the 20 week legal deadline. That single figure reframes what you are experiencing: a late plan is not a sign that your case has gone wrong or been singled out. It is the most common outcome in the country right now.

Two things in that table are worth pausing on. First, the sheer volume: more than 150,000 families asked for an assessment in one year, and nearly 100,000 new plans were issued. Second, the timeliness figure: even after stripping out the cases where a lawful exception applied, 46.1% of plans arrived on time. The other half arrived late, to families who mostly did not know a clock was running at all.

These are national averages. Behind them sit 153 councils whose performance ranges from nearly all plans on time to nearly none, so your own council's figure matters more than the average. The Department for Education publishes this data once a year, usually in June, so the figures on this page refresh with each annual release.

Why is your EHCP taking so long?

Almost always for reasons that have nothing to do with your child's case. Three pressures stack on top of each other in most councils.

1. Demand has risen sharply and stayed high. The request and caseload figures above describe a system processing far more cases than it was built for. Every stage, from the first decision to the final plan, has a queue in front of it.
2. Educational psychologists are in short supply. An assessment cannot lawfully finish without advice from an educational psychologist (SEND Regulations 2014, reg 6(1)(d)), and there are not enough of them. When a council tells you it is "waiting for the EP report", this is the bottleneck it means. The professional asked for advice has their own 6 week deadline to provide it (reg 8(1)), which is often where the whole timeline first slips.
3. Late stages inherit early delays. The 6 week decision, the 16 week no-plan deadline and the 20 week final plan all run from the same start date, the day your request arrived. They run concurrently, not one after another, so a slow start does not pause anything. A council six weeks late on assessment advice is already on course to miss week 20.

Understanding the causes helps you predict where your case will stick. It does not change whose problem it is. The law is unusually clear on that, which is the next section.

What the law says, whatever the backlog

The council must issue the final plan "as soon as practicable, and in any event within 20 weeks" of receiving the request for assessment (SEND Regulations 2014, reg 13(2)). That duty does not flex with workload. There is no provision anywhere in the regulations that lets a council extend a deadline because it is busy, understaffed or waiting on a contractor.

There are exactly four lawful exceptions, listed in regulation 10(4)(a) to (d), and every one of them is about your family or your child's setting, never about the council:

• advice was requested from a school just before or during a closure of four weeks or more, for example over the summer holidays;
• the same, for an early years provider;
• exceptional personal circumstances affecting your child or your family during the period;
• your child or your family being out of the council's area for a continuous period of four weeks or more.

Council workload, staff shortages and educational psychologist scarcity are not on the list. The Code of Practice adds that even where an exception does apply, the remaining steps must still happen within their normal timescales, and the council should tell you it is relying on one (SEND Code of Practice 2015, 9.43). The full detail, including how the exceptions interact with the 6 and 16 week deadlines, is in the 20 week deadline guide.

What delay does to families

A late plan is not just a late document. Until the final plan exists, the council's absolute duty to secure the support in Section F has not started (Children and Families Act 2014, s.42(2) applies from issue), so every week of delay is a week your child goes without provision someone has already agreed they may need. For a child waiting on a school placement, delay can decide whether the right setting is named in time for September.

There is a quieter cost too. Most parents assume silence means the case is moving, so months pass before anyone realises a deadline expired. If that is where you are, nothing about the waiting was your fault, and none of the time already lost stops you acting now. The steps below work at any point of delay, whether you are one week past a deadline or a year past it.

Your options at each point of delay

Delay is not appealable to the SEND Tribunal, because there is no decision to appeal against. Instead you escalate in writing, one rung at a time. In brief:

1. A chase letter citing the exact regulation. One page to the case officer, copied to the SEN team manager, stating the date the request was received, the deadline that has passed, the regulation, and one specific ask with a date on it. Cited chases get treated differently from general ones.
2. A formal complaint through the council's own process. Written as maladministration: the duty breached, the dates, the chases, and the effect on your child, with a specific outcome requested.
3. The Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman. Once the council's complaints process is exhausted or ignored. Delay is squarely within the Ombudsman's remit precisely because no tribunal right covers it (Local Government Act 1974, s.26(6)(a)).
4. A judicial review pre-action letter, for serious or urgent delay.Solicitor territory, and usually decisive: most cases settle at the letter stage with the council doing what it should have done.

Each rung is evidence for the next, and most cases resolve on the first two. The full version, including the evidence log to build first, what each step can actually get you, and how to pick between complaint, Ombudsman and Tribunal, is in the escalation ladder guide. If your dispute is about what a decision or plan says rather than when it arrived, that is the Tribunal instead, and the success rate figures are worth reading before you decide.

Case Manager works out each of these deadlines from your dates and emails you seven days and one day before each one. Sign up for Case Manager

EHCP delay compensation: what the Ombudsman recommends

The Ombudsman upholds EHCP delay complaints routinely, and its remedies go beyond an apology. Where its investigation finds fault, it typically recommends the council complete the outstanding steps by a set date, apologise, make service improvements, and pay a financial remedy for what your child missed.

The figure most parents ask about is published in the Ombudsman's own Guidance on Remedies: where fault has resulted in a loss of educational provision, it will usually recommend a payment of between £900 and £2,400 per term. Where the amount lands in that range depends on the severity of your child's needs, whether any partial provision was made, whether the lost provision can still be made up, and how significant the period was in your child's school career. Separate, additional payments can be recommended for distinct injustice to parents, such as prolonged uncertainty.

Source: Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman, Guidance on Remedies, children and education chapter, lgo.org.uk.

Two honest caveats. These are recommendations rather than court awards, although councils almost always comply with them. And a remedy payment arrives after an investigation, so it compensates for lost provision rather than preventing the loss. That is why the earlier rungs of the ladder matter: the chase and the complaint are what actually speed the plan up.

How does your council compare?

The national average hides a very wide spread. The Department for Education publishes 20 week timeliness for each of the 153 councils in England, and the difference between the best and worst is the difference between a plan that arrives on time and one that arrives a school year late.

We have turned that data into a page for every council, showing its timeliness against the England average of 46.1%, alongside its caseload and refusal figures. Knowing your council's number is practically useful, not just interesting: a chase letter that says "this council issued fewer than half its plans on time last year" is grounded in published data the council cannot dispute, and the same figure gives the Ombudsman context for how systemic the fault is. The data refreshes each year when the DfE publishes its annual release.

Get your exact dates

Everything on this page gets easier once you know precisely which deadlines apply to your case and when each one falls. The free deadline checker takes the date your request was received and prints every deadline in your process with the regulation next to it: the 6 week decision, the 16 week no-plan deadline, the 20 week final plan, and the rest. Those dated, cited lines are exactly the wording a chase letter needs, and having them in advance means you spot a breach the week it happens rather than months later.

This page is legal information, not legal advice. For advice on your individual case, IPSEA and your local SENDIASS service offer free, independent support.