Successful special educational needs complaints in England quadruple in four years
Successful complaints about councils' special educational needs and disability (Send) services in England have quadrupled in four years, in the latest evidence of the crisis facing the system.
The local government and social care ombudsman (LGO), which handles complaints about English councils, upheld 1,043 cases regarding Send provision in 2024 – nearly 40% more than in 2023, and four times more than the 258 upheld in 2021.
The Send system – for children with disabilities and conditions such as autism and ADHD – always faced challenges, but has been in crisis since the coalition government increased the age range of young people entitled to Send support without giving councils the necessary funding.
Rising needs among children have outpaced increases in government funding, leaving a toxic combination of ballooning council deficits, legally required provision going unfulfilled and children and parents left in crisis, sometimes without any schooling.
Covid exacerbated the problems faced by children with Send, with Ofsted reporting in 2021 that they had been disproportionately affected.
'These figures provide yet more evidence that the English Send system is circling the drain,' said Matthew Keer, of the Special Needs Jungle website. 'Families don't make these complaints lightly – they usually have to exhaust local procedures first before they can turn to the ombudsman.
'The compensation that councils pay out to families is almost always far less than the cost of delivering provision in the first place – so even though most complaints are justified, local Send practice rarely improves.
'These complaints mostly describe incidents that happened in 2022 and 2023. The Send system has got a lot worse since then, and there's no sign that things are starting to get better.'
Many of the complaints regard delays in creating education, health and care plans (EHCPs), which set out the legally required provision to meet a Send child's needs. Only half of all EHCPs are produced within the 20-week legal time limit. In one complaint upheld by the LGO in 2024, Suffolk council took 18 months to create an EHCP, with the complainant's daughter missing out on education during that time.
Overall, there were 1,527 Send complaints to the LGO last year including cases that were not upheld, compared with 1,086 in 2023 and 391 in 2021. The success rate of complainants has remained relatively consistent during that time.
'We know there are significant issues with the wider system for Send children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities and their families,' said Amerdeep Somal, the local government and social care ombudsman. 'The system is broken and we know this situation will not be resolved without sweeping changes.
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'The recommendations we make are fair and pragmatic. In some cases we have required a local authority to provide us with an action plan on how they will improve their services for children with special educational needs where we have found significant and recurrent fault.
'We track compliance with all the recommendations we make, and we will take further action if there is a failure to comply. In the overwhelming majority of cases (more than 99%) we are satisfied the authority has put in place the improvements we have required.'
The Department for Education said it was investing £1bn into the Send system and an additional £740m into creating specialist school places.
'In a system that is too skewed towards specialist provision and over-reliant on EHC plans, we know families are too often forced to fight to get the right support,' a spokesperson said.
'We are determined to rebuild families' confidence in a system so many rely on. The reform families are crying out for will take time, but with a greater focus on mainstream provision and more early intervention, we will deliver the change that is so desperately needed.'
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