Backlog of care plans for children with special needs will be cleared by the new year, according to West Northamptonshire Council
West Northamptonshire Council (WNC) has said it will clear its backlog in issuing care plans for children with special educational needs and disabilities by the new year.
Assistant Director of Education, Ben Pearson, said that at the time of the authority’s SEND service inspection in March last year, nearly 1,000 children were waiting for their Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP) assessments. As of June this year, the number dropped to just over 660 plans that still needed to be finalised.
A Children, Education & Housing Scrutiny Committee meeting last on Thursday October 2 heard that, as a result of continued investment and recruitment in teams, EHC trajectory shows the backlog will be cleared by January 2026.
An EHC plan is for children and young people aged up to 25 who need more support than is ordinarily available to address their special educational needs or disabilities.
As part of the council’s priority action plan to improve its SEND provision, it has created an extra 17 caseworker posts and two EHC service manager posts.
Continued investment in educational psychologists, which recently suffered a national shortage and was cited as one of the main reasons for delays, has also been a key piece of work. The backlog of education psychology assessments is now completely cleared and 80 percent of all evaluations are completed within the six-week timeframe.
However, according to the most recent data published on the first quarter of this year (April to June 2025), just 2.2 percent of EHCPs were completed within the statutory 20 weeks. It should be noted that 50 percent of EHCPs are issued within 20 weeks nationally.
Mr Pearson told the meeting: “We have made the commitment to always work chronologically, we will deal with assessments as they come into the council.
“What we won’t do is quickly do new assessments to make our figures look better – that’s not fair on children.”
Despite the poor performance in the number of EHCPs completed on time, 389 plans were issued in the same period, which is the highest amount since the formation of WNC.
The council continues to receive an average of 125 requests for EHCPs per month. They say the demand will be managed by additional staff who have been recruited and through the investment in early intervention and prevention services.
As of June 2025, the current number of children who have an EHCP in West Northants is 4,708, which is an increase of more than 20 percent from the same point last year.
West Northants Council has also confirmed that its programme to create more than 600 additional specialist school places is on track, including the opening of the new Tiffield Special School this September, and the expansion of the Gateway Special School and Daventry Hill School to accommodate more SEND pupils.
Plans to create and grow SEND units and places in mainstream schools are also underway to improve local provision.
A monitoring inspection of SEND provision in West Northamptonshire will take place before Spring 2026 and will judge whether the local partnership has made progress in key areas of commissioning, addressing EHC assessment wait times, improving the quality of care plans, and addressing wait times in speech and language therapy and mental health services.
A full Ofsted and CQC reinspection into SEND services across WNC, Northamptonshire Children’s Trust and healthcare providers will take place in 2027.