Bristol City Council Council pays compensation to parents of SEN child

The Local Government Ombudsman told Bristol City Council it needed to pay compensation to the family affected

The parents of a child with Special Educational Needs (SEN) have received £3,800 from Bristol City Council for failing to provide her with lessons.

The girl stopped attending school after suffering anxiety because it was not meeting her needs, a watchdog heard.

It ruled the local authority had not fulfilled its legal duty to ensure she was able to continue her learning.

The council said it apologised for failing to support the child with her lessons for seven months.

Bristol City Council had a legal obligation to ensure the child continued her learning from April to 2021, The Local Democracy Reporting Service said.

'Significant injustice'

The Local Government Ombudsman upheld a complaint by the child's father, referred to as Mr B, and told the council to pay compensation and tighten up its processes to ensure deadlines for publishing education, health and care plans (EHCPs) were not breached.

It took more than a year to produce the girl's plan, instead of the 20-week statutory time limit, which delayed the parents' appeal for which school she would go to, causing "significant injustice".

The ombudsman's report said: "Clearly the council did not comply with the 20-week timescale, given Mr B asked for an EHCP for his daughter in October 2020 and the council did not issue the final EHCP until October 2021, more than 12 months later."

It said the girl had a part-time timetable at her school until Easter 2021, after which she no longer attended because of a lack of suitable provision, and that lack of education between then and May last year was a "service failure" by the local authority.

In response the council said improvements had been made to its systems for EHCPs as well as communication with families of SEN youngsters.

It said it had made a concerted effort to "improve timeliness and quality of contributions to needs assessments across health, social care and education to EHC needs assessments".