Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what estimate she has made of the average age at which a child was referred for an Education, Health and Care Plan in (a) Mid Cheshire constituency, (b) Cheshire and (c) England in each of the last five years.

Information on education, health and care (EHC) plans is published in the statistical release ‘Education, health and care plans’. This includes information on the total numbers of requests for an EHC plan received by each local authority. The publication can be found here: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/education-health-and-care-plans.

The number of requests for an assessment for an EHC plan is shown in the attached table. The table gives the number of plans in each age group, plus the average age when a request was made. Information is supplied for England, and the local authorities Cheshire East and Cheshire West and Chester for the calendar years 2022 and 2023. Data on the number of requests by age is not available for years prior to 2022.

Information on the number of requests for an assessment for an EHC plan is not available at constituency level.