# Special educational needs: how an EHCP actually happens

> An education, health and care plan is a legally enforceable document a council must finalise within 20 weeks of a request, yet roughly half of plans miss the statutory deadline and tribunals overturn most refusals.

*Section: Education — By Priya Anand (Lifestyle & Travel Editor) — Published July 12, 2026 — 4 min read*

Canonical URL: https://dailyjunction.co.uk/education/special-educational-needs-how-an-ehcp-actually-happens
Tags: send, ehcp, special-educational-needs, councils, tribunals

## Key takeaways

- Councils have six weeks to decide whether to assess and 20 weeks from the original request to a final plan, deadlines fixed by regulations under the Children and Families Act 2014.
- Section F of a final plan is legally enforceable against the local authority, which is why provision must be specified and quantified rather than described in vague aspirations.
- Parents win the overwhelming majority of appeals to the First-tier Tribunal (SEND), with roughly nineteen in twenty registered appeals decided at least partly in their favour.

The education, health and care plan is one of the strongest legal instruments an ordinary family can hold against the state, and one of the most routinely mishandled. Created by the Children and Families Act 2014, an EHCP is not advice or a school's internal paperwork: it is a statutory document that binds the local authority to secure the special educational provision written into it. More than 600,000 children and young people in England now have one, the number has risen every year since the system began, and the machinery that produces them is governed by deadlines that councils miss on an industrial scale.

The process starts with a request for an EHC needs assessment, which can come from a parent, the school, or a young person themselves once they are over 16. Nobody needs a diagnosis, a report, or the school's blessing to ask; a letter or email to the council's SEND team is enough to start the statutory clock. From the day the request lands, the local authority has exactly six weeks to say yes or no to assessing. The legal test at this stage is deliberately low — the child may have special educational needs, and it may be necessary to make provision through a plan — and refusals that recite a higher bar, such as demanding the school first spend a fixed sum or exhaust a cycle of interventions, are applying a test that does not exist in law.

If the council agrees to assess, it must gather written advice, including a report from an educational psychologist, and reach a decision on whether to issue a plan. The whole journey, from the original request to the final signed plan, must take no more than 20 weeks under the 2014 regulations. Inside that envelope sit further fixed points: the decision on whether to issue must normally come by week 16, a draft plan then goes to the family, and parents get 15 days to comment and to name the school or college they want. The council must consult that placement, and the setting gets 15 days to respond. Section F of the final document lists the provision itself, Section I names the placement, and Section F is the part with teeth — a council can be forced, ultimately by judicial review, to deliver every hour of support written there, which is why experienced advisers insist provision be specified and quantified rather than left as "access to" or "opportunities for".

The 20-week deadline is where the system's reputation collapses. Department for Education figures have shown only around half of new plans issued within the statutory timescale in recent years, and in some authorities the on-time rate has fallen into single digits. Crucially, the deadline does not evaporate because a council is busy or short of educational psychologists; the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman has repeatedly ruled that staffing shortages are no defence, ordering councils to pay remedies for lost provision during the delay. Families who chase in writing at each missed milestone build the paper trail those remedies are awarded on.

## The tribunal that parents almost always win

A refusal at any stage — to assess, to issue a plan, or over the contents of Sections B, F and I — carries a right of appeal to the First-tier Tribunal (SEND). Before most appeals, parents must obtain a mediation certificate, which simply proves they considered mediation; they are not obliged to take part. The appeal itself is free, no lawyer is required, and the statistics are startling: year after year, roughly 95 to 98 per cent of registered appeals are decided wholly or partly in the family's favour. Councils know this, which is why a large share of appeals concede before the hearing date. The tribunal's win rate is often read as proof that authorities use refusal as a filter, betting that most families will not appeal — and most, in fact, do not.

## Deadlines are the whole game

Everything in this system rewards the parent who knows the timetable. Six weeks to a decision on assessing, 16 to a decision on issuing, 20 to a final plan, 15 days to respond to a draft, two months to lodge an appeal: each date is a lever, and each missed date is evidence. Once a plan exists, it must be reviewed at least annually, and any council decision to amend or cease it triggers the same appeal rights all over again. The families who fare best are rarely those with the most dramatic case; they are the ones who put every request in writing, count the weeks, and treat the statutory calendar as the contract it legally is.

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Daily Junction — https://dailyjunction.co.uk/education/special-educational-needs-how-an-ehcp-actually-happens