Council in East Sussex sees sharp decline in EHCP performance

More families in East Sussex are waiting longer for Education, Health and Care Plans (EHCPs), county council leaders have heard.

On Tuesday (June 30), East Sussex County Council’s cabinet considered a monitoring report setting out its performance for the 2025/26 financial year .

The report showed a sharp decline in its ability to issue new EHCPs in the 20-week time legal limit.

The plans set out a child’s specific educational, health, and social care needs and the targeted support they are entitled to receive.

The report says only 25 per cent of EHCPs issued by the council last year were within the 20-week limit. The year before (2024/25) 71.3 per cent were issued within the time limit.

The figures exclude ‘exception cases’ where legislation allows for delays beyond the 20-week limit. If these cases are included in the figures, the council issued 68.5 per cent of its EHCPs within the time limit in 2024/25 and 23.6 per cent in 2025/26.

Conservative councillor Paul Redstone asked senior officers to account for the decline in performance.

Director of children’s services Carolyn Fair attributed the change to rising demand since the government announced plans to reform the way support for Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) is assessed and provided.

Ms Fair said: “You will have noted from the report a 63 per cent increase [in requests to carry out EHC assessments] over the course of the last three years.

“We have seen that pattern spike even further, particularly off the back of the announcement of SEND reforms, which has created a level of anxiety. The message from the Department for Education has been that they will honour existing EHCPs and that has created a rush.

“We are seeing double the number of assessments currently [when compared] with the same time last year.

“We have additional support in place; we are seeing that have an impact but I suspect it is going to continue being an upward battle over the course of the next couple of years whilst we pivot the system to respond to the SEND reforms.”

Meeting papers said 579 EHCP (excluding exception cases) were issued by the council in 2025/26. The 25 per cent issued within 20-weeks accounted for 145 of these.

This report states the decline in timescale performance began in the third quarter of 2024/25 and says this is “mainly due” to the council not receiving the information it needs from statutory partners in a timely manner.

It links this to ‘capacity challenges’ connected to rising demand for assessments.

It describes this as “a national issue” and says the council had previously been “performing well above national and statistical neighbour averages for completion rates within 20-weeks.”

The report states the council is undertaking work to ‘improve timeliness’ of EHCPs.

This includes the “introduction of a strengthened multi-agency EHC plan quality framework and clearer expectations for health and social care contributions”, the report says.

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