The Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman has advised costs of £13,000 for the errors and issued a statement criticising the county hall.
A complaint by Mrs X centred on an emergency review which took place in 2023, after which it took close to two years for the council to issue a revised Education Health and Care Plan for her child.
Once the documentation was produced it included reference to a school which had refused the young person admission. As a result, they were left unenrolled for their GCSE year.
According to the case report, the school had already confirmed that it would not be able to provide the necessary support to educate the student, therefore placing responsibility on the council to review and amend the EHCP, which had been unchanged since 2020.
A replacement had been due by May 2024, but this deadline was missed and Staffordshire authority staff recommended re-admission to the original school — despite this not being possible.
Alternative provision was then assessed in September the same year, but no action was taken, leading to a letter of complaint to Mrs X’s MP, at which point the council apologised and agreed to investigate. Mentoring then started in February 2025.
‘The council must review an EHC Plan at least once per year,’ said the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman. The last substantive review of the EHC Plan had taken place in 2020. Reviews took place in 2021 and 2023 which kept the existing plan in place. However, the school named on the review wrote to the council to say that it could no longer provide educational provision.
‘I consider it correct the council agreed to carry out an emergency review following the discovery of this information,’ they continued. ‘However, I find fault that it took it almost two years to complete this. Under the regulations set out above, the council had 12 weeks in total following a review meeting to produce and amend the plan.’
Image: Brianna Lengacher / Unsplash
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