Case overview

The local authority (LA) agreed to an education, health and care (EHC) needs assessment request. However, it then failed to decide whether to issue an EHC plan within 16 weeks, or to finalise an EHC plan within 20 weeks, from the date of receiving the request.  These are legal deadlines set out in The SEND Regulations 2014, regulations 10 and 13 respectively.

The LA said it was unable to meet the legal deadlines due to a shortage of educational psychologists in the area.

The child, through her litigation friend, applied to judicially review the LA’s failure to meet these deadlines.

The LA then obtained the legally required educational psychology advice before deciding not to issue an EHC plan. It issued its decision nearly 13 weeks late.

The child continued with their claim and asked for a declaration to provide clarity on the law. The court agreed that this would be in the public interest and declared that the LA had acted unlawfully.

The judge also considered whether this case was symptomatic of a wider problem within the LA following evidence that other children had been similarly affected. The court found there were large numbers of children whose assessments had not been completed within the legal timescales. It held that the LA had:

“regularly failed to meet the mandated timescales set out in the SEND Regulations, and therefore acted unlawfully on a significant number of occasions. Such systemic illegality, in contrast to a one off breach, is not something that should go unmarked“.

What does this mean?

This case confirms earlier case law; the deadlines set out in the SEND Regulations 2014 are mandatory. The only lawful reasons for failing to complete EHC needs assessments by the deadlines are set out in regulation 10(4) of The SEND Regulations 2014, and staff shortages are not one of them. The law recognises the importance of timely assessment of children and young people, ensuring there is no harm or prejudice to them caused by delay.

The full case report JSC (A Child, By Her Litigation Friend, JC), R (On the application of) v Cambridgeshire County Council [2026] EWHC 68 is available online.

For more information, see our policy blog on staff shortages, our template letter for writing to local authorities when EHC needs assessments are delayed and information on how waiting lists from specialist services affect the assessment process.