EHCP Refusal Rates and Waiting Times by Council (2026 Data)

There is a number the Department for Education puts at the top of its press release, and there is a number that actually decides what happens to your child. They are not the same number.

The headline says that in 2025, only 6% of completed EHC needs assessments ended without a plan. That sounds like a system that says yes. It is not the number that matters, because it only counts children who were assessed in the first place. The real gate sits earlier, and it is much harder to get through.

The number that actually matters

In 2025 councils in England received 162,702 requests for an EHC needs assessment. Of the requests they reached a decision on, they agreed to assess 106,062 and refused 43,289. That is a refusal rate of 29%.

So roughly three in ten families who ask are told no before anyone has looked properly at their child. Then, of the children who do get assessed, 94% are found to need a plan. Read those two facts next to each other and the picture changes. The assessments overwhelmingly find that the child qualifies. The system’s main filter is the decision to assess at all.

That refusal rate has climbed three years running: 26.3% in 2023, 27.8% in 2024, 29.0% in 2025. Requests rose 18% over the same period, from 138,242 to 162,702.

Why we calculate it differently to the DfE

The DfE publishes refusals as a share of all requests received. We publish them as a share of requests decided. The difference matters, and it is not a technicality.

At the end of any year, thousands of requests are still sitting there with no decision recorded. Counting those in the denominator makes a council look more generous than it is. Milton Keynes is the clearest example: 58.5% of its requests had no recorded decision, which drags its published refusal rate to 0.0%. That is not a council saying yes to everyone. That is a council that had not answered.

Marking those out gives a fairer comparison. Where 15% or more of a council’s requests had no decision recorded, we have flagged it in the table with an exclamation mark, and left it out of the rankings. That affects 14 of the 153 councils.

The postcode lottery, in one line

Among the 138 councils with reliable figures, the refusal rate runs from 6.4% to 63.5%. Same law, same statutory test, same year.

The ten hardest councils to get an assessment from in 2025:

• Sunderland: refused 63.5% (375 of 591 decided requests)
• Bracknell Forest: refused 62.4% (204 of 327 decided requests)
• Walsall: refused 61.8% (609 of 986 decided requests)
• Devon: refused 55.4% (1,223 of 2,206 decided requests)
• Derbyshire: refused 51.2% (1,352 of 2,643 decided requests)
• Kent: refused 50.9% (2,122 of 4,173 decided requests)
• East Sussex: refused 50.8% (599 of 1,180 decided requests)
• Sutton: refused 48.2% (313 of 650 decided requests)
• Doncaster: refused 47.9% (374 of 781 decided requests)
• Wakefield: refused 47.2% (388 of 822 decided requests)

And the ten most likely to say yes:

• Wolverhampton: refused 6.4% (39 of 612 decided requests)
• Cambridgeshire: refused 7.6% (142 of 1,874 decided requests)
• Rutland: refused 7.8% (10 of 129 decided requests)
• Southampton: refused 8.3% (30 of 363 decided requests)
• Sheffield: refused 10.2% (139 of 1,358 decided requests)
• Leeds: refused 11.3% (353 of 3,123 decided requests)
• Calderdale: refused 14.0% (83 of 593 decided requests)
• North East Lincolnshire: refused 14.4% (67 of 465 decided requests)
• Greenwich: refused 14.6% (102 of 700 decided requests)
• Norfolk: refused 15.0% (347 of 2,319 decided requests)

Twenty four councils refused more than 40% of the requests they decided. Nine refused fewer than 15%.

Then there is the waiting

Once a council does agree to assess, the law gives it 20 weeks to issue the plan. In 2025, across England, 45.5% of plans made that deadline. On the DfE’s alternative measure, which strips out cases where the law permits an exception, it was 46.1%.

Either way, more than half of plans were late. The average time to issue a plan was 25.6 weeks. One in ten plans, 10.1%, took more than a year.

Seventy one of the 150 councils with figures came in under 50%. The spread is even wider than for refusals: Derbyshire issued 4.8% of its plans on time and averaged 35.4 weeks, while Wandsworth, Barnet, Windsor and Maidenhead, the Isles of Scilly and the City of London all recorded 100%.

Do the councils that refuse more move faster?

It is the obvious suspicion, so we tested it rather than implying it. Councils refusing 40% or more of requests averaged 61.1% of plans on time. Councils refusing 20% or less averaged 52.2%.

That gap looks suggestive, but the underlying correlation across all 137 councils with both figures is weak (r = 0.145). That is not strong enough to say councils are refusing children to protect their waiting time statistics, and we are not going to say it. What the data does support is narrower and still worth knowing: a low refusal rate is no guarantee of a quick plan, and some of the most generous councils are among the slowest. Cambridgeshire refused only 7.6% of requests and then took an average of 54.4 weeks to issue a plan.

If you are choosing between two areas, look at both columns. One good number can hide a bad one.

Home education is absorbing some of this

In the autumn term of 2025/26 there were 126,000 children in elective home education in England, up 12.8% on the autumn before and up around 56% in three years. In 127 of the 148 councils with comparable figures the number went up.

The year group profile tells you what this actually is. Year 11 is the largest group at 24,100, then Year 10 at 21,800 and Year 9 at 18,800. Reception is 400. This is overwhelmingly a secondary school story, concentrated at exactly the age where SEND support tends to run out.

On stated reasons, mental health is the single largest recorded category at 16%, ahead of philosophical or preferential at 12%. Add general school dissatisfaction, SEND dissatisfaction and bullying together and you get 15%. Treat all of these with some caution: 17% of records are unknown and a further 12% have no reason given, and some councils, Birmingham among them, file most of their cases under “other”.

Every council, in one table

All 153 English councils below. Refusal rate is our decided-requests measure. Click a council for its full breakdown.

If your council has said no

A refusal is not the end of it, and the numbers above are the reason to take that seriously. When 94% of completed assessments find the child needs a plan, a refusal to assess is often a decision about capacity rather than about your child.

You have two months from the decision letter to appeal to the SEND Tribunal, or one month from your mediation certificate if that date falls later. You have to contact a mediation adviser first, but you do not have to go through with mediation to get your certificate.

• Free EHC needs assessment request letter generator, which argues the actual statutory test rather than the higher bar councils tend to apply.
• The EHC Assessment Refusal Appeal Pack if you have already been refused and want the process set out properly.
• Everything else we have on SEND and EHCPs.

Before anything else, talk to your local SENDIASS, which is free and impartial, and read IPSEA‘s guidance. Neither of them sells you anything.

Common questions

What percentage of EHCP applications are refused?

In England in 2025, councils refused 29% of the EHC needs assessment requests they reached a decision on. Separately, of the assessments that were carried out, 6% did not result in a plan. The 29% figure is the one most parents are actually up against, because it is the decision on whether to assess at all.

Which council refuses the most EHCP assessments?

Of councils with reliable data for 2025, Sunderland refused the highest share at 63.5% of decided requests, followed by Bracknell Forest at 62.4% and Walsall at 61.8%. Wolverhampton refused the fewest at 6.4%.

How long should an EHCP take?

The law allows 20 weeks from the request to the final plan being issued. In practice only 45.5% of plans met that deadline in England in 2025, the average was 25.6 weeks, and 10.1% took more than a year.

Is it worth appealing a refusal to assess?

The published figures do not tell you your individual odds, and anyone who quotes you a single success rate is being loose with the data. What the figures do show is that when assessments are carried out, 94% of them find the child needs a plan. That is worth knowing before you accept a no.

Does moving council improve my child’s chances?

The variation is real, but do not move house on the strength of a table. Refusal rates and waiting times both shift year to year, and a council that looks generous can still be slow. Use these figures to know what you are dealing with, not to plan a relocation.

Where does this data come from?

All of it is from the Department for Education. EHCP figures come from the Education, health and care plans statistical release covering calendar year 2025, published in 2026. Home education figures come from the Elective home education collection for the autumn term 2025/26. We have recalculated refusal rates on decided requests and flagged councils with incomplete reporting, and everything else is as published.

Sources

• Department for Education, Education, health and care plans, England 2026 (calendar year 2025).
• Department for Education, Elective home education, autumn term 2025/26.
• Children and Families Act 2014, section 36, the duty to secure an EHC needs assessment.
• The Special Educational Needs and Disability Regulations 2014, regulation 13, the 20 week timescale.