Annual Reviews of EHC Plans

Your local authority must review your child's EHC plan at least once a year. This is to look at how your child is progressing and to ensure that the plan is kept up to date. This process is known as the annual review. 

The annual review is a formal process that must follow certain legal requirements. These requirements are set out in the SEND Code of Practice 2015. 

It includes a meeting, but this is not the only part of the process. The whole process takes several weeks to complete and is best described as being in four parts;

1. Invites and requests for advice are sent to all those who are involved with the child. This MUST include parents and carers. An Educational Psychologist may or may not attend. The Local Authority officer must also be invited, but might not always attend. You should be given notice of the meeting and enough time to complete your form. Everyones advice should be collated and sent as a bundle to you and everyone else attending the meeting at least two weeks before the meeting itself.

2. The meeting takes place. you should have already seen the advice from everyone, so there shouldn't be any new information given to you at the meeting. The meeting is the opportunity to discuss how the plan is supporting the child, how we are working towards targets, any further support or changes needed, and setting new targets and outcomes. The meeting should be documented in the "summary" report, which school usually complete throughout the meeting.

3. Within two weeks of the meeting, everyone should be sent the summary report and the advice collected. This also needs to be sent to the LA. 

4. Within four weeks of the meeting, the LA must write to you to tell you how they are responding to the review. It will be in the form of a letter which will say the LA intend to do one of three things; keep the plan as it is, amend the plan, or cease the plan. You have a right of appeal for any of these decisions. If the LA intend to amend the plan, they must do it as soon as practically possible. 

The responsibility for carrying out annual reviews lies with the local authority, but in most cases the local authority delegates organisation of the review meeting to your child's school.

Your child's first annual review must take place within 12 months of their plan being first made. After that, each review should take place within 12 months of the previous review. For children under 5 years, the law says these should be more frequent (3 to 6 months) to account for changing needs.