Council leader apologises over SEND delays

A council leader has apologised to families for a backlog in assessing children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND).

Lucy Nethsingha, the Liberal Democrat leader of Cambridgeshire County Council, said she recognised the county was "particularly bad" at processing cases on time.

There is a backlog of 1,800 children in Cambridgeshire waiting for Education, Health and Care Plans (EHCPs), a legal document outlining their needs and support.

"I think the first thing I need to say is that I'm sorry about the backlog," Nethsingha told BBC Radio Cambridgeshire.

"I absolutely understand how difficult it is for families and for schools who are waiting for assessments that we just haven't had the staff capacity to do."

She said the council had hired more staff to clear the backlog but that there had been an "enormous jump" in EHCP applications.

About 9% of EHCPs in Cambridgeshire are being issued within a statutory 20-week (140-day) deadline, compared with around 46% nationally.

According to council calculations, mainstream schools missed out on more than £7.3m in funding last year because EHCP funding is not backdated when plans are issued late.

Councillors discussed a motion brought forward by Labour and Conservative councillors to investigate the issue at a meeting on Tuesday, but it was not voted on after time ran out.

Nethsingha said Cambridgeshire was a particularly fast-growing part of the country, and that the council had experienced issues with high staff turnover.

"It's a very high pressure environment," she said.

"One of the big bottlenecks is that every one of these [plans] has to be signed off by an educational psychologist and there's a massive national shortage of those," she said.

A spokesperson for Cambridgeshire County Council said it was making additional investment to tackle the delays.

They said: "As a council we have been campaigning for increased and fairer funding for education and for national reform of the SEND system to better meet the needs of Cambridgeshire's children and young people."

The issue will be discussed by the council again when its Children and Young People Committee meets on Tuesday.

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