Councillors want to see more detail on Warwickshire County Council's efforts to catch up on EHCP needs assessments. 

An EHCP – education, health and care plan – is sought by parents or professionals when a child is considered to have special educational needs (SEN) that are more complex than can be accommodated in a standard mainstream school setting. 

Education authorities have a responsibility to complete assessments with a 20-week timeframe but surges in demand have led to delays nationally. 

Warwickshire has endured a particularly tough time keeping up, even with the national average of half of assessments being completed in the statutory timeframe, but quarterly performance figures show improvement.

In the final quarter of 2023-24 – up to March 2024 – Warwickshire's rate was as low as 14 per cent but the latest data shows that had gone up to 30 per cent across October, November and December 2024 when 67 out of 224 were done on time.

A council report said: "Performance is due to very significantly increasing demand and a backlog of EHCPs to process.

"A process review has taken place to optimise ways of working whose recommendations are being implemented, but these can only mitigate the fundamental challenge of the rapidly increasing levels of demand."

Cllr Tim Sinclair is part of the children and young people overview and scrutiny committee, the panel of elected members who oversees the council's work in these areas.

He praised the "steady improvement" but called for more detailed information to fully understand the pressures and challenges faced by the authority.

"What I lack is the detail within that. It is reasonable context but it doesn't give us any more information," he said. 

"I get the broad point but I would find it interesting to understand the detail within that. What is the increase in demand? What process changes? When we look at a performance of 30 per cent, is that true across the whole county, or within certain demographics, age groups or certain needs?

"You are obviously making progress but it would be interesting to understand how that is happening and then look at the direction of travel to move it to better."

Johnny Kyriacou, the county's director of education, said the information was available, including on the scale of the county's backlog, processing, the volume of new requests coming in and how the team had been set up to meet demand.

He also noted that some cases slip beyond 20 weeks because of the desire to take a fair approach to those already running late.

"We could focus on everyone within the 20 weeks and come back with 60, 70, 80 per cent, but we are also dealing with a backlog and we don't want anyone to be disadvantaged," he added. 

"That's perhaps the kind of detail you are asking for in terms of our approach. There may be young people who are at week 25 or week 27, we are equally processing those as well and trying to do everything in one go. 

"There is a narrative behind the data and I am happy to come back and give more detailed updates." 

Cllr Sinclair suggested the committee may want to assess the detail but noted that it was the final meeting before the county council elections, meaning a new and very different panel could be deciding on what the areas of focus are when it meets again.

He was also keen to point out how the rest of the education department's targets were being met. 

"There is some really good performance here. You can see the step on," said Cllr Sinclair.  

"We should focus on that. We do understand as members how hard the team has worked."