The EHCP timeline: how long each stage should take

If you have asked for an EHC needs assessment and heard nothing for weeks, it is hard to know whether that is normal or whether something has gone wrong. The honest answer is that the law is very clear about the deadlines, and that a great many local authorities miss them.

Here is what should happen, and when.

How long does the whole EHCP timeline take?

The local authority has 20 weeks from the day it receives your request to the day it issues a final Education, Health and Care plan. Within that window it has six weeks to tell you whether it will assess at all, and 16 weeks to tell you if it has decided against issuing a plan.

When does the 20 week clock actually start?

On the day the local authority receives your request. Not the day it replies, not the day it opens a case, and not the day a caseworker is assigned.

That distinction matters more than it sounds. If you make your request by email you have a dated record of exactly when the clock started, and that is much harder to dispute months later than a phone call. Keep the email.

If you are not sure how to word the request, there is a sample letter (opens the PDF in a new tab) you can adapt.

What should happen in the first six weeks?

The local authority decides whether to carry out an assessment, and must tell you either way.

If it agrees, the assessment begins and the clock keeps running. If it refuses, it has to explain why and tell you about your right to appeal. A refusal at this stage is not the end of the road, and it is worth knowing that plenty of assessments go ahead after an initial no.

What happens between six and sixteen weeks?

This is the gathering stage, and it is usually where the delays creep in.

The local authority asks for advice from everyone involved with your child: the school, an educational psychologist, health professionals, and anyone else with something relevant to say. Each of them has six weeks from being asked to respond.

Speaking from the school side, this is the part I have most often watched go wrong. The request lands, the person who holds the information is not available, and by the time it is pulled together the six weeks are nearly gone. It is rarely anyone being obstructive. It is usually nobody owning the deadline.

Week 16 matters, but not in the way it is usually described. If the local authority decides not to issue a plan, it must tell you by week 16, and that notification has to come with your right of appeal. If it decides it will issue a plan, there is no separate 16 week deadline for saying so. The duty it is working to is the 20 week one for the final plan. So silence at week 16 is not automatically a breach, though it is a very reasonable moment to ask where things stand.

This is the deadline the High Court declared Cambridgeshire had breached in the case set out further down this page, where the decision not to issue a plan arrived nearly thirteen weeks late.

How long do I get to comment on the draft plan?

At least 15 calendar days, beginning with the day the draft is served on you, so that day is day one. Not working days. That is regulation 13(1)(a) of the Special Educational Needs and Disability Regulations 2014.

Use them. This is your opportunity to say what is missing, to ask for the provision to be written more precisely, and to say which school you want named. Vague provision is very hard to enforce later, so if something reads as “regular support” rather than a specific amount delivered by a specific person, say so now.

One thing worth understanding: those 15 days sit inside the 20 weeks rather than being added on top. The 20 week deadline is for the final plan, not the draft.

Can the local authority miss the statutory EHCP timescales?

Only in a small number of situations set out in the SEND Regulations 2014. The main ones are where your child is away from the area for at least four weeks, where there are exceptional personal circumstances, or where the school or setting is closed for at least four weeks and that delays the information coming in. The SEND Code of Practice covers these exemptions at paragraph 9.42.

What does not count is a local authority being short staffed or having a backlog. That was tested in R (JSC) v Cambridgeshire County Council [2026] EWHC 68 (Admin) (opens in a new tab), handed down on 19 January 2026. The council had missed the 16 week deadline by 12 weeks and 6 days, and explained the delay by pointing to high demand and a shortage of educational psychologists, which it described as a national difficulty. The court held there was no question that it had acted unlawfully. These deadlines are not a best endeavours target. An earlier judgment called them “hard edged legal duties”, and this one agreed.

The judge went further than the single case. Statistics obtained under the Freedom of Information Act showed the council had been missing the deadlines regularly, and he said that systemic illegality of that kind should not go unmarked.

What can I do if a deadline is missed?

Start by writing to the local authority, naming the specific deadline that has passed and the date it passed, and asking what is happening and when. Keep it factual. A dated, specific email is far more effective than a frustrated phone call, and it also builds a record if you need one later.

If nothing moves, you can complain formally, and beyond that there are routes to the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman and, in some circumstances, to the courts. That is the point at which you want proper legal advice rather than guidance, and IPSEA (opens in a new tab) is the place to go. Your local SENDIASS service can also help, free of charge.

How long should an annual review take?

The review meeting itself is only part of it. After the meeting, the local authority must tell you within four weeks whether it is leaving the plan as it is, amending it, or ceasing to maintain it.

If you have a review coming up, I have written a separate guide on how to prepare for an EHCP annual review.

Are these timescales about to change?

You may have seen reports about EHCPs being reformed or replaced. The government has set out proposals that would reshape the system, but nothing changes yet. The current 20 week process remains the law. The published timetable says there will be no changes to the support received through EHCPs before at least September 2030, and the wording is deliberately “at least”, so that is a floor rather than a fixed date.

You may also see September 2029 mentioned. That is when assessments under the new system would start, and when the government expects new legislation to come into effect. Until it does, the current system stays exactly as it is, including all the deadlines on this page. It is not the point at which existing plans change. If your child has a plan now, it stays as it is until at least September 2030.

So if you are in the process now, or thinking about starting it, plan against the deadlines above.

Where SEND Guidance can help

If you are stuck, or your local authority has gone quiet, I can help you work out where you actually stand and what to do next. That might mean checking whether a deadline has genuinely been missed, helping you word the email that chases it, or making sense of a draft plan before your 15 days run out.

If it is a review you are heading into rather than a first request, that is what Annual Review Support is for.

If you are not sure whether your child needs a plan at all, start with what an EHCP is and when a child might need one. If your school has said it will not apply, that is a different problem with a different answer.