Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to increase the availability of appointments for education, health and care plan assessments.

Local authorities have a statutory responsibility to assess whether children and young people have Special Educational Needs which require an Education, Health and Care (EHC) plan. EHC plans must be issued within twenty weeks of the needs assessment commencing so that children and young people can access the support they need. In 2022, there were 114,482 requests for an EHC needs assessment and 72,695 assessments took place. The number of assessments has been increasing year on year since EHC plans were introduced. As of January 2023, 517,049 children and young people have EHC plans.

Where local authorities are failing to deliver consistent outcomes for children and young people with Special Educational Need and Disabilities (SEND), the department works with them using a range of improvement programmes and SEND specialist advisors to address weaknesses. Stockport is one of a number of local areas where the department is monitoring their EHC plan performance. The department is working with Stockport to improve their EHC plan quality as one of the key actions in the Local Area Partnerships ‘Accelerated Progress Plan’ following their most recent Ofsted Care Quality Commission inspection.