Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, in the context of the SEND Review, what steps his Department is taking to help ensure digitised EHCP processes do not exclude people without easy access to digital services.

The department is consulting on a proposal to digitise the education, health and care (EHC) plan process with a new digital EHC plan template and a secure central location for parents, carers and professionals to upload key information, improving consistency and reducing the bureaucracy of the process. A digital EHC plan process will also allow for better data collection including anonymous tracking of progress made towards outcomes and analysis of trends in the prevalence of need, and the support and provision that is made available.

We will work with parents and carers to make sure they can submit and access all the relevant information for producing, maintaining and reviewing the plan in a streamlined way that is easy to access and navigate. The department recognises some parents and families may not have access to digital services and we will accommodate for these circumstances, as we develop digitised processes for EHC plans, such that they are not excluded or disadvantaged.