The number of SEND-related complaints upheld by the councils watchdog has leapt by a quarter in just one year.
In 2025, the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman (LGO) upheld 1,315 SEND complaints, 26 per cent more than the 1,044 upheld in 2024. It is also more than five times the 236 upheld in 2021.
The figures include cases where the Ombudsman decided not to investigate because the council had already admitted fault and provided a remedy.
Families complain to the Ombudsman about how councils deal with services and provision for pupils with special educational needs and disabilities.
The LGO upheld 71 per cent of SEND complaints in 2025, a similar proportion to the previous two years.
Forty-three complaints were not upheld, while a further 489 were closed after initial enquiries.
Just 25 of England’s 153 councils with SEND responsibilities made it through 2025 without having any LGO complaints upheld against them.
Catriona Moore, policy manager at SEND legal charity IPSEA, said: “These statistics expose the extent to which local authorities continue to fail children and young people with SEND.
“The fact that the LGSCO upholds most of the complaints it investigates about SEND provision is clear evidence that the system isn’t working as it should, meaning that children and young people have to wait far too long for the support they need.
“We need meaningful local accountability for decisions about children and young people as a matter of urgency. The LGSCO has an important role to play in this, and IPSEA has long advocated extending the Ombudsman’s remit to schools as well as local authorities, so it can investigate complaints about how schools support children with SEND.”
Essex explosion
Essex, in the east of England, has seen an explosion in the number of upheld complaints, from nine in 2022 to 113 in 2024 and 219 in 2025.
Its upheld complaints accounted for one in six of all those upheld nationally.
Most of the cases upheld against Essex last year concerned delays.
In one case the council took 16 months to allocate an educational psychologist for an education, health and care needs assessment.
The LGO report said the council attributed the delay to “shortages in educational psychologists (EP) and its ongoing struggle to recruit EPs”.
It also said that “assessment requests were at an all-time high causing a backlog in allocating EPs”. The LGO ordered the council to pay a minimum of £2,000 to the complainant.
Council delays and failings also meant a child missed out on nearly two full school years of speech and language therapy and therapeutic alternative education stipulated in their EHCP, with the LGO instructing the council to pay £5,500 to the child’s mother
Another case involving a shortage of educational psychologists was exacerbated by the council’s SEND team twice failing to pass on to the council’s education welfare service the information that a SEND child was not receiving education.
It meant the child went without education provision for 15 months. The LGO ordered a payment of at least £4,000 to the complainant.
‘Most relate to delays’
Tony Ball, Essex council’s cabinet member for education, put the 219 upheld complaints in the context of the county’s 16,000 young people with EHCPs.
“The majority of these complaints relate to delays in issuing EHCPs, specifically where we have not been able to meet the 20-week timescale,” he said.
“The LGO has acknowledged these delays are primarily due to the national shortage of education psychologists and are classed as ‘service failures’, which means something impacting a council but not entirely within its control.”
He added that the council was “seeing progress” in its SEND system “because of the changes and investments we have made.
While some county councils saw the number of upheld SEND cases plateau or tail off in 2025, others saw continuing year-on-year rises – from 16 to 46 in Buckinghamshire, from 25 to 38 in Staffordshire, and from 26 to 66 in Lancashire after just seven upheld cases in 2023.
Bromley saw its cases double from 14 in 2024 to 29 in 2025, but large city councils such as Liverpool and Sheffield saw relatively few cases, while five London councils had no upheld cases at all.
An LGO spokesperson said: “The number of complaints we receive about special educational needs provision continues to rise year on year, and represents a major part of our work.
“We are in ongoing dialogue with Essex County Council about the volume of complaints we have received.”
Your thoughts