Bristol EHCP Timeliness Hits 07 Per Cent
Bristol City Council still fails to hit legal timeframes
Bristol City Council continues to flounder with EHCP timeliness. In 2025, it hit a rate of just 07 per cent by the end of November 2025. This was for all EHCPs which includes exception cases.
Exception cases allow the local authority to go over the 20 week limit in very limited situations like school holidays of four weeks or longer. Or ‘exceptional’ personal circumstances affecting the family.
Without exception cases, the local authority managed to reach 12 per cent of plans issued on time.
But when including exception cases in its data, the number of EHCPs finalised in the same period, January – November 2025 inclusive) it fell to 07 per cent.
The data will be presented to councillors on the Children and Young People Policy Committee this month.
There were 103 Education, Health and Care Needs Assessment (EHCNA) requests in November 2025. An EHCNA is when a school or family put in the initial request for an assessment. This may then lead to an assessment and/or an Education Health Care Plan (EHCP).
There are strict legal timeframes for each stage of the process. Bristol City Council has historically failed to meet this.
Looking at the latest historical data available from the Department for Education, it shows that in 2024, just 118 EHCPs were finalised on time out of a total 684.
Committee papers for this month’s meeting say that the number of EHCNAs requested in November 2025 was lower than the same time period in previous years.
In 2025 up to the 30 November, 1250 requests were received. This, the council says, is a ‘decrease’ of ten per cent compared to the same period in 2024.
The council says that 2024 was an ‘exceptionally high’ year for EHCNAs. This has so far been put down to former Labour Cabinet lead Asher Craig cutting non-statutory top up funding.
The council further goes on to say that the rate of requests in Bristol per 10,000 population in Quarter 2 in 2025/26 was 17. This was below the national rate of 18.5.
Bristol has historically been below the national average of EHCPs despite city leaders behind the failed mayoral system under Marvin Rees blaming ‘unprecedented demand’.
Bristol City Council says that improving both the timelines and quality of plans ‘remains a priority’.
The number of plans issued in 2025 has ‘reduced’ the number of children waiting for their needs assessment.
The council is referring to what is known by families in Bristol as the EHCP “backlog” – though spun by former Send leaders in Bristol as “legacy cases”.
The issuing of plans reduced the number of children waiting for an EHCNA in July 2025 was 1,389. But November 2025, it fell slightly to 1,250 children.
The paper from Executive Director Children & Education, Hannah Woodhouse says: Improving the timelines and quality of children’s plans remains a priority, although the proportion of EHCPs issued within 20 weeks remains below target (7% for the year to date and 12% for November 2025). The increase in the number of children’s plans being issued in 2025 has reduced the number of children awaiting a needs assessment from a peak of 1,389 children in July 2025 to 1,250 children at the end of November 2025.
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