LGSCO SEND Complaint: How to Take Your EHCP Complaint to the Ombudsman

The Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman (LGSCO) upheld 83% to 92% of investigated SEND complaints in 2024-25. SEND complaints now account for one in four of all complaints received by the Ombudsman — 22,010 enquiries in a single year, up 15% from the previous year.

Those figures matter because they tell you something important: if your local authority has failed to follow the law on your child's EHCP, the LGSCO is likely to agree with you. The question is knowing when to use this route, what you can realistically expect from it, and how to present your complaint effectively.

What the LGSCO Can and Cannot Do

The LGSCO investigates maladministration by local authorities — specifically, administrative failures, procedural breaches, and unreasonable delays. In the SEND context, this covers:

• Failing to issue a final EHCP within the 20-week statutory deadline
• Failing to deliver provision specified in Section F of an existing EHCP
• Systemic delays in EHC needs assessment processes
• Poor handling of Annual Reviews
• Failure to respond to formal complaints within the LA's own published timescales

When the LGSCO upholds a complaint, it can order the local authority to apologise, pay financial compensation for distress and for the cost of provision the child missed, review its internal processes, and implement systemic changes.

What the LGSCO cannot do is alter the contents of an EHCP. It has no jurisdiction over the educational decisions within the plan — which school is named, what provision is specified, whether the child should have an EHCP at all. Those decisions belong to the SEND Tribunal. The LGSCO also cannot investigate a matter that carries an active right of appeal to the Tribunal, even if the parent has not yet exercised that right.

This boundary is critical. If your primary complaint is that Section F does not specify the right provision, the LGSCO cannot help with that — you need to appeal to the Tribunal. But if the LA issued the EHCP three months late, failed to implement the provision it does specify, or mishandled your complaint, the LGSCO can investigate and award a remedy.

The Precondition: Exhausting the LA's Internal Process

Before the LGSCO will investigate, you must have completed the local authority's formal complaints procedure. Most LAs operate a two-stage internal complaints process. You must have gone through both stages, or the LA must have unreasonably delayed responding, before you can approach the LGSCO.

Keep all evidence of your complaint: send correspondence by email so you have date-stamped records, log every telephone call with the date and name of the person you spoke to, and note what was said. If the LA fails to respond within its own published timescales, document that too — it becomes evidence of maladministration in itself.

There is a 12-month limitation period: you must contact the LGSCO within 12 months of becoming aware of the problem. Do not wait. If the LA has been in breach for some time and you have been trying to resolve it informally, start the formal complaint process now so the clock is preserved.

What to Include in Your LGSCO Complaint

The LGSCO accepts complaints online at lgo.org.uk. You will be asked to describe the problem, explain what you did to resolve it with the LA, and upload supporting documents.

Your complaint should be structured, factual, and evidence-based. Include:

A clear timeline. Date-by-date account of what the LA was required to do (with the statutory deadline), what it actually did, and the gap between them. For a 20-week assessment delay, this means: date of assessment request, statutory deadline for the final plan, actual date the plan was issued (if at all), and the total weeks of delay.

The specific statutory duties breached. Name the legislation. Section 42(2) of the Children and Families Act 2014 for failures to secure provision. Section 36(8) for assessment timeline failures. The SEND Code of Practice for procedural breaches. The LGSCO investigates maladministration against the backdrop of the law, so being precise about which duty was breached strengthens your case.

Evidence of impact on the child. The LGSCO uses the impact on the child to calculate any financial remedy. Document the provision your child missed and when, whether their educational progress has regressed, any deterioration in mental health or wellbeing, and any private provision you funded yourself to fill the gap the LA left.

Your correspondence with the LA. Include your formal complaint letter, the LA's response (or its failure to respond), and any subsequent exchanges.

What Remedies the LGSCO Can Order

When the LGSCO upholds a SEND complaint, typical remedies include:

• Financial compensation for distress — typically £300 to £1,000 depending on the severity and duration of the failure
• Compensation for missed provision — calculated at the cost of privately commissioning the provision the LA failed to deliver (e.g., if the child missed 30 weeks of weekly speech therapy sessions at NHS cost rates)
• A formal apology from the LA
• Directions to review internal processes to prevent recurrence
• Directions to take specific actions — for example, completing an overdue Annual Review within a set timeframe

The LGSCO does not pay compensation itself — it orders the LA to pay. Compliance with LGSCO orders is generally high, but if an LA refuses to implement a recommended remedy, it can be reported to the Secretary of State.

Timescales: Expect a Long Process

The LGSCO investigation process is slow. From initial complaint to final decision, you should expect a minimum of 12 months, and often longer for complex cases. This is one of the key limitations of this route compared to Tribunal or judicial review.

If your child is currently out of education, missing critical therapy provision, or deteriorating rapidly, the LGSCO is not the right immediate tool. For urgent situations, a pre-action protocol letter threatening judicial review — sent by a solicitor or drafted precisely by the parent — will compel faster LA action. The LGSCO route is most appropriate for historical maladministration where the immediate crisis has passed but you want accountability and compensation for the period of failure.

Using Both Routes

The LGSCO and the SEND Tribunal are not mutually exclusive — they address different things. A family might simultaneously be appealing to the Tribunal about the contents of their child's EHCP (Sections B, F, and I) while also making an LGSCO complaint about the LA's failure to implement the existing provision and its delays in the assessment process.

The key is ensuring the LGSCO complaint does not overlap with the Tribunal appeal. The Ombudsman will not investigate anything that falls within the Tribunal's jurisdiction.

If you are navigating both routes, the England SEND Tribunal Playbook covers the full enforcement landscape — including when to use the LGSCO, when to use Tribunal, and when a pre-action protocol judicial review letter is the faster option.

One Final Point: Complaints That Reveal Systemic Failures

The LGSCO's annual statistics show that certain local authorities generate disproportionate complaint volumes. Essex, Bromley, Solihull, and Walsall have all been subject to systemic LGSCO scrutiny in recent years. If your LA appears repeatedly in LGSCO statistics, that history is publicly available and can be referenced in your complaint to demonstrate a pattern of institutional failure rather than an isolated error.

Systemic failures matter to the LGSCO because they inform the remedies ordered — including whether the LA is directed to conduct a formal review of its SEND processes. Your individual complaint contributes to that broader accountability picture.

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