Bristol Pupils are Facing Long Waits for EHCPs as Timeliness Drops
- The timeliness for the EHCP process dropped to 17 per cent in 2024
- DSG Financial Management Plan shows deficit of £41.5m by end of March 2030
- In 2024, the average wait for an EHCP was 42.3 weeks – more than double the legal time limit
- No questions from councillors on DSG Financial Management Plan
Children with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (Send) are facing lengthy waits for an Education Health Care Plan (EHCP) according to findings sent to this month’s Children and Young People Policy Committee.
Papers on the agenda covered some of the most problematic areas of Bristol Send, including a timeliness issue which has dropped down to less than 20 per cent.
When the local authority receives an Education Health Care Needs Assessment (EHCNA) request, it has six weeks from the date received to decide whether an assessment is necessary. For those that carry on through the assessment stage, the final EHCP must be finalised within 20 weeks of the date received.
At Children and Young People Policy Committee on 06 March 2025, EHCPs and timeliness were on the agenda. Executive Director of the Children and Education Directorate, Hannah Woodhouse, updated councillors on agenda item Children and Young People Policy Committee update report.
Woodhouse said: “The percentage of EHCP plans finalised in 20 weeks continues to be a really significant concern as Christine [Townsend] has already said. We are starting to see, but I recognise it’s only starting and many parents will not be seeing this at this stage, we are starting to see glimmers in terms of increased production of EHCP plans as a result of our investing in the service and supporting and restructuring the service coming through. But we obviously recognise that there’s a really a long way to go as has already been said.”
The Quarterly Performance Report agenda item also delved into EHCP statistics. The target set by Bristol City Council was to issue 50 per cent of EHCPs on time. But during this part of the year, they only managed to hit 22.1 per cent.
The Quarterly Performance Report (Q3 2024/25) said: ‘The proportion of final Education, Health and Care plans (EHCPs) issued within the 20-week statutory timescale (BPPM225e) has decreased since the last reporting period to 22.1% (target 50%) and is below the figure for this time last year by 25.2 percentage points. Multiple pieces of work are taking place to improve this including restructuring the SEND team, developing a new practice framework and reviewing systems and processes to deliver a more timely and higher quality service. To note: SEND data is at end Sept 2024 – reported 3 months in arrears to align SEND calendar year data with the corporate financial year for end of year reporting’
But the earlier Children and Young People Policy Committee Update Report showed a much bleaker picture for EHCP timeliness. For the entire year of 2024, the timeliness was just 17 per cent – a significant drop from 48 per cent at the end of 2023.
Papers said: ‘Partly as a result of the scale of assessment requests, only 2% of EHC plans finalised in December 2024 were issued within the 20-week timescale. Year to date timeliness for 2024 is 17%, a reduction from 48% at the end of 2023. For 2024, the average time from request to issue a final EHC Plan is 42.3 weeks.’
Papers also showed that in the first nine months of 2024, just 106 plans were completed within the legal timescale of 20 weeks. This does not include plans which went to mediation or tribunal which can take many months to get through the Special Educational Needs and Disability Tribunal system.
The progress report notes: ‘Between 1st Jan 2024 and 30th Sept 2024 479 EHC plans were finalised (excluding exception cases and those with a mediation or tribunal). Of these 106 were completed within the 20 week timescale. We are completing a restructure in the SEND team to ensure we can ensure timely person centred work for families. We are also developing a new practice framework and reviewing systems and processes with our area partners to ensure we are driving improvements. This is alongside with the work in the SEND Strategy to ensure inclusive practice in mainstream schools.’
Director of Education and Skills at Bristol City Council, Vik Verma addressed committee members, pointing out that top up funding cuts made by the former mayoral Cabinet had added to the council’s ability to keep to time.
Verma said: “Over the calendar year 2024, so particularly from March to now, We’ve seen a sustained increase in the number of requests for assessments. So if you take for example that the south west average was somewhere between 09 and 11 per cent on various local authorities, what we were experiencing was about 32/33 per cent increase in that time and that obviously would be alarming if that was a kind of organic demand, an organic kind of increase in demand. But actually what we know that it’s almost entirely attributed to the decision to remove high needs top up funding which is been a feature of the Send service in Bristol for some time.
“I suppose in a nutshell, what that funding offered was early intervention funding for about a thousand children to to the tune of around 8 to 9 million pounds with small grants to schools to support individual children. A decision was made in February of 2024 and this would have been under the previous administration to remove that top up funding and that then set off a wave of schools requesting Education Health and Care Plans and that’s essentially why we see that increase.
Continuing: “What we’ve been doing, so myself and the team have been doing over the last few months is analyzing that data getting a better understanding of which children sit within that cohort. Many of those children have funding for one, two or three years. So it’s not that there’s a an immediate cliff edge, Some of those children would have seen that funding come to an end for example in July of this year, some in July of 2026 Some in the July of 2027. There would have been a scaling off over time and that was part of that Cabinet decision at the time was the funding comes to an end when the package, you know, at the point of which that package was agreed.
“What we determined though as a service was that we want to extend that transition period. We want to make sure that there isn’t a position where children who are in receipt of that top up funding see that come to an end before perhaps an Education Health and Care Plan is then put in place. So that transitional period will be extended. We’re going to be writing to schools next week with the details of that alongside some training and there’s also a letter that we’re go be going out to parents and carers which we have co-written with our Parent Care Forum. And that will allow some time where those schools have requested an Education Health and Care Plan for that child to then for our service to be able to support. But also ensure that children who are in receipt of provision that’s working, that’s working well, that that funding is still there for schools. So what we’ve tried to take is a common sense approach in terms of support for children but put some framework behind that so that we can process that in a reasonable and meaningful way.”
The final agenda item was an update on the Dedicated Schools Grant (DSG) Financial Management Plan. This plan is something local authorities must do for the DfE when they have a deficit on their DSG. The plan must show how they will manage future DSG spends.
Agenda papers show that the council is still struggling to get to grips with its spend on Send, despite receiving the Safety Valve “bail out” from the DfE.
The projected deficit at the end of the agreement is currently believed to be £41.5m by the end of March 2030.
There are further issues with a Statutory Override coming to an end. This had allowed local authorities to hold DSG deficits separately from main revenue budgets. However, this is currently planned to end in March 2026.
Verma told the committee: “This committee will probably be aware that the statutory override which means that the highs block deficit which at the moment sits on the Dedicated Schools Grant as a separate Grant comes to an end next year at the end of March of 2026. At that point if the statutory override is not extended, it would return then to the council’s general fund account and then be treated as part of the council’s deficit so there’s a significant kind of looming deadline. I suppose the spring statement which might give us an indication on what’s going to happen around that.”
“In March 24, Bristol City Council entered into an agreement with the DFE to participate in the Safety Valve Program and the agreement between the DfE and Bristol covers the financial years from 2324 to 2930. So it’s a long-term agreement to bring the overall deficit back into an in-year balance by the end of 29/30 and each subsequent year.
“Within that we signed up to several initiatives to support the bringing down of of that deficit and that set out in the report
“As part of the agreement we provide ongoing monitoring of performance against those initiatives and financial information. So tri -annually. So it’s slightly unusual pattern in that we do that three times a year not the typical kind of four times for for each quarter, but that’s as mandated by the DfE. And those monitoring reports include progress against the conditions and a financial dashboard setting out progress on the deficit itself.
“So since March 2024 when the agreement was entered into the council, has provided three monitoring updates so at the end of May, August and November and I think I think the next one is due in May.
“The way we have approached this in the council is the the primary delivery vehicle for implementing the required changes both in terms of those initiatives but other initiatives that we are delivering as a council – that’s set outside of the Safety Valve Programme is through the Send and Inclusion strategy which came to the committee in January and and was approved. And also the delivery plan that sits underneath that.
“So all of that ties together as part of our overarching work to improve education for children with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities. We’ve highlighted three barriers in the report, so there does continue to be a rise in requests for Education Health and Care plans. I referred to that earlier both that follows some of the national trend, but also some local specific policy areas as well.
“We do continue to use independent non-maintained special schools to support children to meet our statutory duties. Whilst also there is a significant programme to increase the level of specialist provision in the city. And then we mentioned rout data earlier that continues to be a barrier but there is a significant project to address that.
“In terms of in the positive space, obviously the launch of the strategy has been significant in defining the work that we are doing now over the next four years.
“We’ve also launched what we’ve described as our Send place-making service which is our capital programme to increase efficiency of places in the city. We have high confidence in achieving above the targets that have been set with 80 of the 95 new specialist places planned for this September.
” We also have a Send practice team which is improving our practice has been leading quality assurance work to make sure that we have high quality plans but also developing our practice as a service
“The launch of our sen support tool which is an in Innovative tool to support SendCos in assessing needs and applying for funding early if needed.
“And then had positive progress in our meeting with the department for education in November 2024 where the accelerated progress plan was lifted – so formal monitoring by the DfE was lifted – based on their confidence levels of the work that we’re doing in direction of travel.
“So whilst we acknowledge that’s a positive step that you know there’s there’s much more to do.
“And then as shown in the table in the report the forecasted in-year financial position at the end of 2024/25 is expected to reach deficits of 16.6 million more than was agreed in the agreement after the council and DfE contributions have been applied. And the main cause of that is the use of independent non-maintained special schools to meet that statutory need, delays in delivery of a number of schemes – such as Send free school and other projects – although we are continuing to focus on capital projects where we are delivering as opposed to the DfE. And then the impact and the payment of some historical liabilities which refer to the point earlier around some of the challenges in the legacy of spend.”
Although Verma was happy to take questions on the DSG Deficit Management report, no councillors asked any.
Labour Councillor for Brislington East, Katja Hornchen asked if there was an update on the Safety Valve judicial review, which had taken place in January.
Hannah Woodhouse said: “I think firstly to say we do get a lot of correspondence from counselors and obviously parents asking questions and and challenging us around the performance of the service. We’ve referred to it a number of times in this meeting and I know that we do feel really challenged and needing to focus on performance through the strategy work that Vic’s outlined. We have had lots and lots of questions.
“So we have had the the hearing for the Safety Valve judicial review and as we know this was brought by a parent and the the question was all about whether the Safety Valve decision itself constituted the need to consult in and for itself as a decision. We went, we had three days of court hearing. We’re waiting to hear the Judgment. We believe that’s going to be any day. But I think, you know, certainly from the services’ perspective however we end up with it, it is our legal Duty and our priority to make sure that we deliver for children with EHCPs in a timely, effective way – providing quality provision that is what we’ll continue to do. And it is what we’re doing now it’s what we’ll continue to do.
“We’ll take the the Judgment as it comes and consider it as it comes. I don’t think there’s anything else really we can say at this stage other than it’s still our priority to deliver and it will continue to be.”
Chair of Children and Young People Policy Committee, Councillor Christine Townsend added: I don’t think we can either. It could have come this morning, the Judgment. It might come tomorrow morning. It might come next week. It’s the judge to serve that judgment really and then we’ll take it from there as to what the next steps would be for the council, for the DfE and what the implications might be.”
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