Bristol City Council has apologised and paid £3,800 compensation to the parents of a girl with special educational needs (SEN) for failing to provide her with lessons for seven months. She stopped attending school after suffering anxiety because it was not meeting her needs, but the local authority did not fulfil its legal obligation to ensure she continued her learning from April to October 2021, watchdogs ruled.
The Local Government Ombudsman has upheld a complaint by the child’s dad, referred to as Mr B, and told the council to pay compensation and tighten up its processes to ensure deadlines to publish education, health and care plans (EHCPs) are not breached. Instead of producing the girl’s plan within the 20-week statutory deadline, it took over a year, which delayed the parents’ appeal against which school she should go to, causing “significant injustice”.
In response the council says improvements have been made to its systems for EHCPs as well as communication with families of SEN youngsters, while a concerted effort is ongoing to improve timeliness and quality of contributions to needs assessments across health, social care and education. The ruling comes just days after the ombudsman upheld a separate complaint and told the local authority to pay £1,750 for failures in the case of another vulnerable student.
