Bristol EHCP Improvement Plan After Severe Delays
New plan sets out action council is taking on its failed timeliness with Bristol EHCPs
A plan to get to grips with the failing Bristol EHCP process has been launched this summer. The legal process – which is supposed to be completed within 20 weeks – plunged to just one per cent of plans finalised on time in February.
Bristol City Council had already launched its latest SEND and Inclusion Strategy in January 2025. But, the council continued to report severe timeliness issues throughout the first part of the year.
In this month’s papers going to Children and Young People Committee, statistics show the council is still dogged by an overspend on Special Educational Needs and Disability support.
The reasons given for the in-year overspend of £25.4 million on the High Needs Block, the council says, is due to three main factors.
The first is its own overspend on the High Needs Transformation plan.
The numbers of children and young people with EHCPs being placed in ‘high-cost’ independent non-maintained schools is the second issue for them.
However, the expensive placements is the result of the ‘current lack of sufficiency of local maintained provision.’
The third issue was stated as being ‘EHCP top-up funding to schools and academies.’
EHCP statistics released by the Department for Education this summer shows that Bristol City Council has remained under the England national average for the plans, despite the council often claiming that the city had ‘unprecedented demand’.
Councillors on the Children and Young People Policy Committee heard in June 2025, that only 03 per cent of EHCPs were finalised on time in March.
The average wait from families or schools making an Education Health Care Needs Assessment (EHCNA) request was 50.3 weeks.
The newly heralded Education, Health and Care Needs Assessment (EHCNA) Improvement Plan, states there are three areas driving a 35 per cent increase in requests for assessments resulting in delays.
The first issue driving the increase was former Labour Cabinet Education lead Asher Craig cutting non-statutory Top-Up funding. This money went to supporting Send pupils in education without requiring an EHCP.
An Early Intervention Fund (EIF) was set up in its place. The funding for mainstream primary and secondary schools was capped at £1m in total. Applications for funding for up to £2,500 per pupil was available. As part of the application process, schools were expected to provide ‘clear evidence’ of an ‘of a graduated response, reasonable adjustments and evidence-based intervention.’
In June 2026, a Bristol resident asked for details around the number of applications made to the fund.
Bristol City Council said that between November 2024 and May 2025, there were three ‘successful’ application from a total of 33 applications made.
A total grant of £2,152 had been awarded.
The council said that ‘numbers of applications to the fund have been lower than expected with most applications not providing sufficient evidence of meeting EIF criteria to be accepted for review.’
The second driving factor was ‘rising levels of identified need’. This included ‘increases in recognition of autism, SEMH, and Speech, language and communication needs.’
The third driver was ‘Wider funding pressures in schools, which have reduced their ability to meet need from within existing resources…’
Papers for this month’s meeting also shows that whilst the forecast overspend in its Dedicated Schools Grant (DSG) is ‘continuing to grow’ the Safety Valve programme is ‘developing mitigations’ to meet the cost of Send support ‘within available funding.’
The council and Department for Education has a ‘commitment’ to ‘reduce’ the DSG reserve deficit to zero by the end of the financial year 2029/30.
But, finance figures show a ‘mitigated overspend’ currently at £25.5m.
Bristol City Council said of its improvement plan: ‘The improvement plan outlines a renewed commitment, through its SEND and Inclusion Strategy 2024 to 2028 and partnerships with families and service, to build a more transparent, inclusive, and supportive process for children and young people in Bristol.’
You can read more about Bristol City Council’s plan below:
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