The EHCP Timeline: what should happen, and when

The EHCP process has legal deadlines attached to almost every stage of it. Most parents are told about the 20 weeks and nothing else, which makes the whole thing feel like an unmarked road: you send a request, you wait, you chase, and you have no idea whether four months of silence is normal or a breach of duty.

It's usually a breach of duty. Knowing precisely which deadline has been missed, and which regulation it sits in, changes the tone of the conversation more than almost anything else you can do. This page sets out what should happen and when, from the day you send your request through to annual reviews years later.

If you're at the very beginning and still working out whether an EHCP is the right thing to pursue, start with my guide to SEN Support and EHCPs, which covers what the plan is and when it's worth requesting one. This page assumes you've already decided.

The 20-week clock at a glance

The clock starts on the day the local authority receives your request, not the day it opens the post or allocates a caseworker. Everything downstream is measured from that date, which is why it's worth having proof of it.

Week 0: the request

A request can come from you as a parent, from the school or setting, or from a young person aged 16 to 25. You don't need the school's agreement and you don't need an educational psychologist's report to ask. The legal basis is section 36 of the Children and Families Act 2014.

Send it by email. The date of receipt is the single most important date in the whole process, and an email gives you a timestamp that nobody can dispute later. Keep the request itself short, factual and focused on why your child's needs cannot be met from the resources ordinarily available to the school. IPSEA publishes a free model letter, and my SEN Letter Bundle includes a version citing section 36 directly if you'd rather start from something formatted.

Week 6: the decision whether to assess

Within six weeks the authority must decide whether to carry out an EHC needs assessment, and notify you of that decision. This is regulation 5 of the SEND Regulations 2014.

If the answer is no, you have a right of appeal to the First-tier Tribunal (SEND). Refusals at this stage are common and often based on a policy position rather than the legal test, which is simply whether the child may have special educational needs and may need provision beyond what the setting can ordinarily make. Government tribunal statistics have consistently shown around 95% of decided appeals going in families' favour, so a refusal is a stage in the process rather than the end of it.

You normally need to contact a mediation adviser and obtain a certificate before you can appeal, unless the appeal concerns only the school named in the plan. The appeal deadline is two months from the decision letter or one month from the mediation certificate, whichever is later. If the authority offers to reconsider, appeal anyway: the deadline doesn't pause while it thinks.

Weeks 6 to 16: the assessment itself

Once an assessment is agreed, the authority must seek advice and information from a defined list of people. That list includes you as the parent, the school or setting, an educational psychologist, health professionals involved with your child, social care where relevant, and anyone else the authority thinks appropriate or that you reasonably request.

Anyone asked for advice must respond within six weeks of the request. This matters, because the most common explanation offered for delay is that a professional report hasn't come back yet. That's an explanation, not a lawful excuse: the duty to issue the plan within 20 weeks sits with the local authority regardless of who else is late.

Your contribution here carries real weight, and it's the part you have most control over. A fortnight of dated notes about what an ordinary day actually looks like is more persuasive than a general description of difficulties, because it gives the authority a pattern rather than an impression. My EHCP Preparation Pack is built around this stage, with a daily impact diary, an evidence tracker for the paperwork that starts piling up, and a parent views template mapped onto the sections of a plan.

If your child is also waiting on a diagnostic pathway, the two run independently. You don't need a diagnosis for an EHC needs assessment, and waiting for one is not a reason to delay a request. My guides to getting an autism assessment and getting an ADHD assessment cover those routes separately.

Week 16: the decision whether to issue a plan

By the end of week 16 the authority must decide whether it will issue an EHC plan, and tell you. This is regulation 10. If the decision is not to issue, you should also receive a copy of all the advice gathered during the assessment, and you have the same appeal rights and the same deadlines as at week 6.

Read the advice carefully even if you're appealing. Professional reports gathered during an assessment often describe needs more clearly than anything you've been given before, and they're useful well beyond the tribunal.

Weeks 16 to 20: the draft plan and your 15 days

If the answer is yes, the authority sends you a draft plan. From the day it's served you have at least 15 days to make representations about the content, to ask for a particular school or institution to be named, and to require a meeting with an officer of the authority to discuss it. That right to a meeting is in regulation 13 and is worth using when something significant is wrong.

The draft you receive will not name a school. That comes after the authority consults the setting you've asked for.

This fortnight is the most consequential part of the whole process and the easiest to under-use. Most parents read the draft once, feel relieved that it exists, and return it. The section that determines whether the plan does anything is Section F, the special educational provision, because that is the part the authority is legally obliged to secure. Provision written as "access to speech and language therapy" is close to unenforceable. "Weekly 45-minute sessions delivered by a qualified speech and language therapist" is a commitment. Anything unquantified is worth challenging now, while changing it costs an email rather than an appeal.

Week 20: the final plan

The finalised plan must be sent to you, to the setting named in it, and to the health commissioning body, within 20 weeks of the original request. From the date of the final plan you have two months to appeal its content, including the description of needs, the provision in Section F, and the placement named in Section I.

A final plan is legally binding. The authority must secure the special educational provision it specifies. That obligation is absolute, and it isn't reduced by budget pressures or by a school saying it can't manage.

The four exceptions, and what isn't one

The regulations allow the timescales to be missed in four specific circumstances, and only those four. They are set out in regulation 10(4) and applied to the 20-week deadline by regulation 13(3):

Everything else is not an exception. Staff shortages are not an exception. A waiting list for educational psychologists is not an exception. A backlog of cases, a panel that meets monthly, a late report from health, a caseworker leaving: none of these stop the clock. They may explain the delay and they may even be sympathetic explanations, but they don't change what the authority is legally required to do.

When a deadline is missed

Delay is the norm rather than the exception. Department for Education figures published in June 2026 show that 46.1% of new EHC plans were issued within the 20-week timeframe during 2025, slightly down on 46.4% the year before, and those figures already exclude cases where a lawful exception applied. The number of children and young people with a plan reached 718,800 in January 2026, the largest year-on-year rise since plans were introduced. The system is overwhelmed, and your child is still entitled to the timescales.

An escalation route that tends to work, in order:

Start here

SEN Support & EHCPs Explained

What an EHCP actually is, how it differs from SEN Support, when it's worth requesting one, and how to make the request.

→

After the plan: annual reviews

A plan must be reviewed at least every 12 months. For children under five the SEND Code of Practice suggests every three to six months, because needs change quickly at that age.

The review is not just the meeting, and this is where a great deal goes wrong. After the meeting, the authority must tell you within four weeks whether it intends to maintain the plan as it is, amend it, or cease to maintain it. If it proposes to amend, it must send you the proposed amendments and a draft, you get at least 15 days to comment, and the final amended plan must follow within eight weeks of the draft being sent. The High Court in the Devon case in 2022 confirmed that an amended plan flowing from a review must be issued within 12 weeks of the review meeting.

You can ask for an early review at any point if your child's needs change significantly, if a placement is breaking down, or if your child is at risk of exclusion. You don't have to wait twelve months. If school attendance is becoming difficult, my guide to school anxiety and school refusal covers what to raise and when, and my School Meetings & Communication Pack has prep sheets and follow-up templates for getting what was agreed in a review confirmed in writing.

Phase transfers: the two dates that matter

When a child with a plan moves between phases of education, regulation 18 sets hard deadlines for issuing the final amended plan naming the new setting:

Working backwards, that means the review meeting normally has to happen in the autumn term of the preceding year, with the draft issued before Christmas. If your child is in a transfer year and nothing has been arranged by half term in the autumn, chase it then rather than in January. These dates are not adjustable for local pressures, and a missed 15 February is a breach worth escalating straight away, because it determines where your child goes in September. If a move to a new setting is coming, my guide to going back to school with a neurodivergent child covers the transition itself.

Where to get help

If money is tight while you're going through this, it's worth checking whether your child qualifies for Disability Living Allowance, which is not means-tested and doesn't depend on having an EHCP. My guide to DLA for children covers how the assessment works and the current rates.