The Ombudsman's final decision
Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about the process of reviewing and amending the complainant’s child’s Education Health and Care plan. The complaint about matters which took place before 2025 is late and there are no good reasons to consider it now. The later aspects of the complaint have already been upheld, or could reasonably have been the subject of appeal to the First-tier Tribunal (Special Educational Needs and Disability).
The complaint
The complainant, Miss X, complains that the Council: delayed reviewing her child’s Education Health and Care (EHC) plan; delayed issuing a decision following an urgent annual review; issued a flawed EHC plan; failed to communicate appropriately; and delayed its responses to her formal complaint.
The Ombudsman’s role and powers
We investigate complaints about ‘maladministration’ and ‘service failure’, which we call ‘fault’. We must also consider whether any fault has had an adverse impact on the person making the complaint, which we call ‘injustice’. We provide a free service, but must use public money carefully. We do not start or continue an investigation if we decide we could not add to any previous investigation by the organisation. (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended, section 34(B)) We cannot investigate late complaints unless we decide there are good reasons. Late complaints are when someone takes more than 12 months to complain to us about something a council has done. (Local Government Act 1974, sections 26B and 34D, as amended) The law says we cannot normally investigate a complaint when someone has a right of appeal, reference or review to a tribunal about the same matter. However, we may decide to investigate if we consider it would be unreasonable to expect the person to use this right. (Local Government Act 1974, section 26(6)(a), as amended) The First-tier Tribunal (Special Educational Needs and Disability) considers appeals against council decisions regarding special educational needs. We refer to it as the Tribunal in this decision statement.
We will not usually investigate complaint handling if we are not investigating the rest of the complaint. This is because there is not usually enough injustice to justify us doing so. We collect information about particularly poor complaint handling practice and report this back to organisations. (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), section 34B(8))
How I considered this complaint
I considered information provided by the complainant.
I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.
My assessment
Miss X’s child has an EHC plan. Miss X says the Council failed to ensure that an annual review of the EHC plan was carried out between 2022 and January 2025. She says she then asked for an urgent review which was carried out in May 2025, but no decision to assess was issued for 11 weeks. She says the amended EHC plan the Council subsequently issued contained errors.
Miss X further complains about the way the Council has communicated with her. She says her child’s case officer failed to respond to her enquiries and the Council missed its own deadlines when responding to her complaint.
The Ombudsman will not investigate Miss X’s complaint about the delay to her child’s annual review. This is because it is late. Late complaints are when someone takes more than 12 months to complain to us about something a council has done. Miss X did not come to the Ombudsman until January 2026. There are no good reasons for us to consider matters before January 2025 and we will not do so.
The Council has already upheld Miss X’s complaints about the delay in issuing the decision following the urgent annual review and about the case officer’s communication with her. The Ombudsman will not normally investigate complaints which have already been upheld. It is not a good use of our resources to do so. The delay in issuing the decision after the urgent annual review is not so significant as to warrant separate investigation and the Council’s apology provides an appropriate remedy.
Matters relating to the content of the EHC plan will not be investigated because they carry the right of appeal. If Miss X believed the errors were significant, it was open to her to appeal to the Tribunal against the content of the EHC plan and it would have been reasonable for her to do so. We will not intervene.
Final decision
We will not investigate Miss X’s complaint because part of the complaint is late, part has already been upheld, and part relates to a matter which could reasonably have been appealed.
Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman