Ombudsman rules West Northamptonshire Council must pay £450 to family for causing 'unnecessary and avoidable distress'

A Northamptonshire council has agreed to pay £450 to a family after a communications blunder meant a child’s care plan was delayed.

The Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman (LGO) said West Northants Council (WNC) was at fault for causing “unnecessary and avoidable distress” due to issuing an education health and care plan (EHCP) late.

The council has accepted the recommendations and said that it is “sorry” to not meet the required timelines.

The complaint against WNC involved a four-month delay in the family receiving a completed EHC plan. These plans set out the additional support required for children and young people with extra educational, health and social needs.

The Ombudsman acknowledged that the setback was, in part, a service failure because of the national shortage of educational psychologists. It found that one month of this delay was a fault on the Council’s behalf due to the educational psychologist completing the child’s report and mistakenly not sending it to the council.

The LGO wrote that the mother, referred to in the report as ‘Mrs X’, had chased WNC for an update on the care plan five times after its completion, which was unbeknownst to the council. It wasn’t until the mum asked for the educational psychologist’s details and contacted them herself that the correspondence blunder was spotted.

The local authority acknowledged it had not met the statutory timescale and apologised. It also recognised its communication with the educational psychologist was not as it should be.

The report wrote: “The Council accepts that it did not chase the educational psychologist for their report. It says it sent limited chaser emails to educational psychologists because of the huge pressure that service was under.

“I cannot say how long the Council would have waited to receive the educational psychologist’s report, had Mrs X not contacted them herself and uncovered their mistake.

“This is fault. It is only Mrs X’s actions that stopped the delay being much longer than it could have been.”

West Northamptonshire Council has agreed to make a payment of £450 to remedy the injustice caused by the delay. It has also sent the Ombudsman details of its strategy to recruit more educational psychologists.

Cllr Fiona Baker, Cabinet Member for Families, Education and Skills at WNC said: “As a Council and as a partnership we have been open in recognising the challenges we face in terms of a significant shortfall of provision for SEND places across West Northants and overdue education, health and care needs assessments and the impact this is having on our children, young people and their families.

“We are sorry that we have not met the required timelines to issue an EHCP plan and we accept the ombudsman’s recommendations.

“This continues to be a significant focus for us to address the challenges we face in this area to ensure our children and young people with special educational needs and/or disabilities have access to the right support at the right time, and that includes being issued with an EHC plan within the timeframe.

“We have invested in additional resources, such as additional EPs to address our timeliness, but we have been open that this will take time to see improvements.

“We know we are not there yet, and we are doing all we can to improve this. We know this isn’t an instant solution, however these issues are unfortunately not a quick fix and are challenges being felt by local authorities across the country.”