Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether her Department plans to ensure that local authorities that do not reach the 20-week deadline for education, health and care plans have effective improvement plans in place.

The department wants to ensure that, where required, education, health and care (EHC) plan assessments are progressed promptly and, if needed, plans are issued as quickly as possible so that children and young people can access the support they need.

Local authorities have a statutory responsibility to assess whether children and young people have special educational needs that require an EHC plan. Plans must be issued within twenty weeks of the needs assessment commencing so that children and young people can access the support they need.

The department continues to monitor and work closely with local authorities that have issues with EHC plan timeliness. Where there are concerns about a local authority’s capacity to make the required improvements, we help them to identify the barriers to this and put in place an effective recovery plan. This includes, where needed, securing a specialist special educational needs adviser.

In the 2023 calendar year, 50.3% of new EHC plans were issued within twenty weeks. This is a slight increase compared to 2022, when the figure was 49.2%.