EHCP deadlines: your legal rights as a parent (England)

Statutory timescales exist so children are not left years without a plan while needs escalate. In England, the Children and Families Act 2014 and the SEND Code of Practice set expectations for Education, Health and Care (EHC) needs assessments and EHCPs—including what it can mean if the Local Authority misses an EHCP deadline. When an LA misses a step, that delay is not a minor admin slip—it can be evidence in complaints, mediation, and tribunal. This guide summarises the headline deadlines parents most often need, what "weeks" usually means in practice, what to do next when dates slip, and how to protect yourself if delays continue. This guide is for general information only and is not legal advice. Always check your own letters and current regulations, and consider charities such as IPSEA for casework detail.

From request to plan: the assessment clock

After you request an EHC needs assessment, the LA must decide within six weeks whether to assess. If they agree to assess, further stages follow—including seeking advice from education, health and care professionals—before a draft plan or a decision not to issue. The familiar "twenty weeks" headline refers to the maximum time from the request for assessment to the final EHCP (or a decision not to issue), subject to specific exceptions in law (for example where holidays arise or you agree an extension). If your LA routinely quotes vague delays, cross-check their dates against the framework and keep a dated record of every letter and email.

For a plain-language map of your statutory rights across the SEND journey—not only assessment—see our SEND rights guide. If the LA refuses to assess or refuses to issue after assessment, different appeal routes and evidence emphases apply; our EHCP refusal and appeal guide walks through that lane.

Draft plans, final plans, and amendments

Once a draft EHCP exists, parents usually have a set window to comment and request changes before the plan is finalised. Treat that window as a deadline in its own right: miss it, and you may be arguing later from a weaker position. After finalisation, significant changes typically go through amendment or annual review routes rather than endless informal rewrites—so the dates on amendment letters matter as much as the dates on the original assessment decision.

Ceasing an EHCP is a separate decision with its own expectations about review and consultation. If you are told a plan will be ceased, read the letter carefully, note the stated reasons, and diarise any appeal or mediation steps immediately. Parallel processes (school move, health discharge, social care step-down) often collide with EHCP timescales; a single timeline document stops you from chasing the wrong team while a statutory date quietly passes.

How "weeks" are counted in real life

Statutory guidance and regulations use week-based limits that do not always feel intuitive when you are living them week by week. School holidays, agreed extensions, and specific exceptions can all affect the calendar your LA should be using. When an LA gives a verbal "it's on its way" without a dated decision letter, ask for the decision and the statutory basis in writing. If their maths does not match yours, you want that mismatch captured early—not discovered the day before a review.

Bank holidays, half terms, and local inset days do not pause your stress, but they sometimes pause or reshape official steps. That is not an invitation to accept vague silence: it is a reason to keep chasing politely and to log what you were told would happen next, by whom, and by when. Over a year, those logs become the difference between "we were always on it" and a clear pattern an independent panel can see.

Annual reviews and amendments

An EHCP must be reviewed at least every twelve months. The review is not a chat for the sake of it: it should look at progress, outcomes, and whether provision remains appropriate. LAs and schools should cooperate so that decisions about changes to the plan are made in a timely way. When you disagree with proposed changes—or when provision on the ground does not match Section F—your contemporaneous log of missed sessions, emails, and meetings becomes the spine of any escalation. Our EHCP annual review preparation guide sets out how to walk into that meeting with organised evidence rather than a carrier bag of anxiety.

Where the LA proposes amendments after a review, you may have a limited period to consider and respond. Use that time to compare the new wording line by line against what your child actually receives—especially Section F—and to gather short factual updates from school or therapists. If health or social care elements are wrong or out of date, flag it in writing even when the school is the loudest voice in the room: the plan is meant to be education, health, and care together, not a single department's draft.

Health and care advice inside the same assessment clock

EHC needs assessments depend on advice from education, health, and care partners. When CAMHS, paediatrics, or therapies are slow to respond, parents often hear that "the LA is waiting on health." That may be true, but it does not automatically excuse every delay—and it does not remove your need for a paper trail. Keep copies of your own referrals, appointment letters, and requests for reports so you can show what was in your control versus what was not.

If a health body repeatedly misses advice deadlines, escalate through the NHS complaints route in parallel with your SEND correspondence. You are not trying to punish individuals; you are trying to unblock a child who may be losing skills while adults pass emails. When tribunal or mediation later asks what you did at the time, a calm, dated sequence of requests reads far better than a single angry message sent months too late.

When dates slip: what parents can do

• Log everything with dates. A single spreadsheet row ("chased LA 3/4—no reply") beats a memory six months later.
• Use the right channel. Stage SEND complaints, local government social care ombudsman routes, and MP casework each have different remits—sequence matters.
• Link delay to harm. Tribunals and panels respond to patterns: missed therapies, unlawful exclusions, or unmet therapy hours alongside missed statutory dates.

Building a chronology early—see our EHCP evidence guide—means that if you later need mediation or tribunal, you are not reconstructing six months from WhatsApp fragments under pressure.

What to do if the LA misses an EHCP deadline

Deadlines feel abstract until one passes. The steps below are deliberately ordinary: most effective chasing is calm, dated, and easy for a neutral reader to follow later. Use the EHCP deadline calculator to sense-check which window you are in from your request or letter dates—then verify against your paperwork and current rules. For printable prompts, see our free SEND downloads (including an annual review preparation pack). Official references and statistics we cite elsewhere on the site are collected on Sources.

1. Confirm which deadline has been missed. Examples include the six-week decision on whether to assess, dates tied to the draft or final plan, or the twenty-week assessment-to-final-plan window—depending on your stage and any lawful exceptions or extensions.
2. Check the date the request was made, or when you received the decision, draft plan, final plan, or amendment letter—or note if nothing arrived when something should have.
3. Save the LA letter or email, or keep evidence that no response arrived (sent/read receipts, portal screenshots with timestamps where appropriate).
4. Write a short dated note of what has happened in plain English—what you expected, what actually occurred, and who you spoke to if anyone.
5. Contact the LA calmly in writing (email is fine). Keep tone factual; you are creating a trail, not venting.
6. Ask for the current status and an expected date for the next step in writing. Request confirmation of which statutory timescale the LA considers applies to your case if there is any disagreement.
7. Keep a record of follow-ups—each chase with date and outcome—so patterns of delay are visible if you later complain or appeal.
8. Escalate if the delay continues: SEND complaints route, local authority escalation, ombudsman where relevant, or tribunal where the law allows—not instead of good records, but because polite chasing sometimes stops working. Sequencing matters; see the bullets under When dates slip: what parents can do above for channel discipline.

Example email to the Local Authority

Adapt tone and detail to your council's usual contact route. Send from the email address you use for EHCP correspondence so threads stay in one place.

Tribunal and other clocks (not the same as the LA timetable)

SEND tribunal routes have their own deadlines: registering an appeal, responding to case directions, and submitting final evidence bundles. Those dates sit alongside—not instead of—the statutory EHCP process. Missing a tribunal deadline can limit what you can put before the panel even when the LA missed earlier steps. If you are heading toward appeal, read our SEND tribunal preparation guide alongside this page so you are tracking both clocks in one place.

Mediation is often a required or strongly encouraged step before tribunal; it can add weeks to your calendar but sometimes clarifies provision disputes without a full hearing. Whether you mediate or not, keep the LA's statutory dates and the tribunal's dates on the same timeline view so nothing is negotiated away by accident.

Checklist: dates worth diarising from day one

You do not need a solicitor-grade bundle on day one—you need a calendar habit. Add reminders for: the six-week assessment decision; any draft plan comment deadline; annual review dates (twelve months from issue or last review); mediation cut-offs if you are heading to tribunal; and tribunal direction deadlines if you are already in appeal. Pair each reminder with a "who owes me a letter" note so you are not only tracking dates but accountable owners.

• Save PDFs of every portal upload with a filename that includes the date you submitted—portals lose context at the worst moments.
• Email beats phone for deadlines. A one-line follow-up after a call ("To confirm, we agreed you would send X by Friday") prevents gaslighting later.
• Match school dates to LA dates. When a school meeting slips after an LA deadline, you need both facts visible on the same line in your log.

Use a calculator—then verify

Our free EHCP deadline calculator helps you estimate key dates from a known start point. It is a planning aid: it does not replace reading your LA's letters or checking current law and guidance. If your case is time-critical, confirm against official sources or qualified advice.

For young people from sixteen to twenty-five, some steps and destinations differ from the primary-phase journey, but the underlying principle is the same: statutory processes should move at a pace that matches need, not administrative drift. If post-sixteen education or training is in flux, keep transport, placement, and health transition dates on the same master timeline as EHCP review dates so one department's delay does not strand your young person between settings.

Send Dossier helps UK parents log events, track provision, and export evidence packs. This guide is for general information only and is not legal advice. Always verify statutory deadlines against your own paperwork and up-to-date regulations.