Reporting year 2024

Education, health and care plans

Children and young people in England with an education, health and care plan (EHCP), including annual local authority activity on EHCP requests and assessment.

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• Produced by: Department for Education
• Published: 13 June 2024
• Last updated: 27 February 2025

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• Featured tables

  Featured tables are pre-prepared tables created from a statistical release's data sets. They provide statistics that are regularly requested by users and can be adapted to switch between different categories.

• Data sets: download or create tables

  Data sets present comprehensive open data from which users can create their own tables using the EES table tool or download a zipped CSV file.

• Data guidance

  Description of the data sets included in this release, including information on data sources, coverage, quality and any data conventions used.

• Data catalogue

  Alternatively use our data catalogue to search and filter for specific data sets from this release or our entire library, providing full data summaries, data previews and access to API data sets.

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Featured tables

Featured tables are pre-prepared tables created from a statistical release's data sets. They provide statistics that are regularly requested by some users (such as local councils, regional government or government policy teams) and can be adapted to switch between different categories (such as different geographies, time periods or characteristics where available).

8 featured tables

• Initial requests for EHC plans, calendar years 2017 to 2023

  The number of initial requests for an EHC plan, and the number and percentage of initial requests that were refused during the calendar years 2017 to 2023.

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• EHC Plan assessments, during the calendar years 2017 to 2023

  The number and percentage of EHC Plan assessments where a plan was issued and the where a plan was not issued, calendar years 2017 to 2023

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• Timeliness of EHC plans

  The number and percentage of EHC plans issued within 20 weeks, including and excluding exceptions, for the calendar years 2017 to 2023

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• The number of new EHC plans which started during each calendar year, by age, for calendar years 2017 to 2023

  The number of new EHC plans which started in each calendar year, by age group for each calendar year from 2017 to 2023

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• The number of new plans by establishment type, calendar years 2022 and 2023

  The number of new plans which started during the calendar years 2022 and 2023 by establishment type, including schools, FE, educated other than in school and not in education, employment or training

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• The number of EHC plans as at January each year, by age, 2017 to 2024

  The total number of EHC plans as at the census date in January each year

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• The number of EHC plans, by establishment type, as at January 2023 and 2024

  The number of EHC plans which started as at January 2023 and January 2024, by establishment type, including schools, FE, educated other than in school and not in education, employment or training

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• The number of EHC plans which ceased during each calendar year, 2017 to 2023

  The number of plans which ceased during each calendar year, by reason they ceased, for years 2017 to 2023

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Data sets: download or create tables

Data sets present comprehensive open data from which users can create their own tables using the EES table tool or download a zipped CSV file.

9 data sets available for download

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• New plans - Age groups

  Local authority, National, Regional

  The number of children and young people with a new EHC plan which started during the calendar year, broken down by age band.

  • Number of rows: 41,292
  • Indicators:
    • Number of plans
    • Percentage of plans
  • Filters:
    • Age group
    • EHCP or statement
  • Time period: 2009 to 2023

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• New plans - characteristics

  Local authority, National, Regional

  The number of children and young people with a new EHC plan which started during the calendar year, broken down by characteristic - includes sex and ethnicity.

  • Number of rows: 9,649
  • Indicators:
    • Number of plans
    • Percentage of plans
  • Filters:
    • Breakdown
  • Time period: 2022 to 2023

  Data set information page
  Create table

• New plans - Establishment type

  Local authority, National, Regional

  The number of children and young people with a new EHC plan which started during the calendar year, broken down by type of establishment attended.

  • Number of rows: 471,075
  • Indicators:
    • Number of plans
    • Percentage of plans
  • Filters:
    • EHCP or statement
    • Establishment type
  • Time period: 2009 to 2023

  Data set information page
  Create table

• Caseload - Age groups

  Local authority, National, Regional

  The number of children and young people with an EHC plan as at January each year, broken down by age band.

  • Number of rows: 41,292
  • Indicators:
    • Number of cases
    • Percentage of cases
  • Filters:
    • Age group
    • EHCP or statement
  • Time period: 2010 to 2024

  Data set information page
  Create table

• Caseload - characteristics

  Local authority, National, Regional

  The number of children and young people with an EHC plan as at January, broken down by characteristic - includes sex and ethnicity.

  • Number of rows: 9,587
  • Indicators:
    • Number of cases
    • Percentage of cases
  • Filters:
    • Breakdown
  • Time period: 2023 to 2024

  Data set information page
  Create table

• Caseload - Establishment type

  Local authority, National, Regional

  The number of children and young people with an EHC plan as at January, broken down by type of establishment attended.

  • Number of rows: 471,075
  • Indicators:
    • Number of cases
    • Percentage of cases
  • Filters:
    • EHCP or statement
    • Establishment type
  • Time period: 2010 to 2024

  Data set information page
  Create table

• Designated medical and clinical officers

  Local authority

  Data on whether a local authority area has a Designated Medical Officer (DMO) or Designated Clinical Officer (DCO) in place on census day.

  • Number of rows: 20,769
  • Indicators:
    • Designated clinical officer in place (Yes/No/Recruiting)
    • Designated medical officer in place (Yes/No/Recruiting)
    • Person performing role of designated medical/clinical officer in place (Yes/No/Recruiting)
  • Time period: 2017 to 2024

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• Residential settings - EHCPs and statements

  Local authority, National, Regional

  The number of children and young people in residential settings, by the duration of setting and age group.

  • Number of rows: 28,666
  • Indicators:
    • Number of children and young people
  • Filters:
    • Age group
    • EHCP or statement
    • Number of weeks
  • Time period: 2017 to 2024

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• Initial requests, assessments, discontinued plans, 20 week timeliness, mainstream to special transfers, mediation and tribunals

  Local authority, National, Regional

  Data on initial requests for assessment, assessments for an EHC plan, discontinued plans, 20 week timeliness and mediation and tribunals.

  • Number of rows: 1,619
  • Indicators:
    • Assessments withdrawn
    • Decision on whether to issue a plan was the subject of an appeal to tribunal
    • Decision to issue a plan was referred for mediation
  • Time period: 2014 to 2023

  Data set information page
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Data guidance

Description of the data sets included in this release, including information on data sources, coverage, quality and any data conventions used.

Description

This document describes the data included in the Education, health and care (EHC) plans National Statistics release’s underlying data files. This data is released under the terms of the Open Government License and is intended to meet at least 3 stars for Open Data. The methodology document should be referenced alongside this data. It provides information on the data sources, their coverage and quality as well as explaining methodology used in producing the data.

Coverage

This release provides information on the EHC plan process including: 

• number of active EHC plans at January of the calendar year
• number of new EHC plans in the previous calendar year
• the administration of requests for assessments for an EHC plan 

The information is based on local authority level data collected via the SEN2 data collection. The underlying data files include national, regional and local authority level data.

File formats and conventions

The dataset and outputs have not had suppression or rounding applied

The following convention is used throughout the underlying data. 

z - Not applicable

x - unavailable

Data files

All data files associated with this releases are listed below with guidance on their content. To download any of these files, please visit our data catalogue.

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Contact us

If you have a specific enquiry about Education, health and care plans statistics and data:

School Census Statistics team

Email: sen.statistics@education.gov.uk
Contact name: Special Educational Needs statistics lead

Press office

If you have a media enquiry:

Telephone: 020 7783 8300

Public enquiries

If you have a general enquiry about the Department for Education (DfE) or education:

Phone: 0370 000 2288

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Monday to Friday from 9.30am to 5.30pm (closed on bank holidays)