The current legal framework has not changed. Education, Health and Care Plans (EHCPs) remain in force under the Children and Families Act 2014, and children and young people will not automatically lose existing plans as a result of these proposals.
The government’s proposed EHCP reforms 2026, however, signal significant structural changes to how statutory SEND support may operate in future.
Two crucial documents have been released today:
- Every Child Achieving and Thriving – summarising the overall approach to education reforms; and
- SEND reform: putting children and young people first – going into more detail about the proposed changes to the SEND system specifically.
Together, they outline proposed reforms that may affect eligibility thresholds, the introduction of Individual Support Plans (ISPs), placement decision-making and Tribunal appeal rights.
This article examines the legal implications of those proposals.
These documents are presented as a ‘generational’ change. It does not seem that long ago that the last ‘generational’ change happened in 2014.
Despite the tired use of hyperbole, the documentation published today does represent significant changes in terms of legal entitlements, everyday practice, accountability and funding. The proposals appear to seek to wash away the current system of formal assessments and replace with a system that – it is claimed – will embed support earlier within mainstream schooling, backed by new statutory duties and massive new investment. Some major promises are made, and a huge level of investment proposed, but does it really work?
Government Funding Commitments Under the Proposed Reforms
Every Child Achieving and Thriving sets out a number of delivery commitments within the wider reform programme, including:
- 6,500 additional teachers in areas identified as having the greatest need
- An attendance target of over 94%
- Expansion of inclusive mainstream provision alongside specialist settings
- A refreshed national curriculum
Across the two documents, the proposed investment includes:
- £1.6 billion Inclusive Mainstream Fund over three years to strengthen SEND provision within mainstream settings
- £1.8 billion “Experts at Hand” service, including £1 billion for direct mainstream support and £800 million for specialist and alternative provision outreach
- £40 million over three years to train additional educational psychologists and speech and language therapists
- £3.7 billion capital investment to 2030 to improve accessibility and expand specialist and inclusion provision
- £3 billion to create 50,000 additional specialist places
- £200 million over three years for SEND continuing professional development
- Up to £15 million to develop National Inclusion Standards
The Narrative Around Mainstream Inclusion
Both documents rely heavily on the narrative that children with SEND have been excluded from mainstream education.
The White Paper states:
“Too many children with SEND have been told they cannot thrive in mainstream schools, and that learning alongside their friends and neighbours is not for them.”
It continues:
“For too long, too many children [with SEND] have been sidelined in our education system…”
That framing is difficult to reconcile with day-to-day Tribunal practice. I do not recall being involved in a Tribunal appeal, or advising a family seeking an EHCP, where the professional starting point was that a child could not thrive in mainstream school.
There is already a statutory presumption in favour of mainstream education. Section 33 of the Children and Families Act 2014 makes that clear. Where a parent seeks mainstream placement, there is a legal duty to make reasonable adjustments to secure that placement unless the statutory exceptions apply.
The issue has historically not been the absence of a mainstream presumption, but the adequacy of funding, specialist provision and practical delivery within schools.
The proposed new SEN System
Three-Tier Support Structure
The indication is that support will be available in all mainstream schools, with up to two layers of additional support: Targeted (including Targeted Plus) and Specialist. In both cases, support is planned and delivered through evidence-based interventions and partnerships with professionals such as speech and language therapists or educational psychologists.
The system would work like this:
- Targeted support
– Basic adjustments and interventions delivered by the school’s staff. - Targeted Plus support
– Involves specialists like SEND teachers or therapists (through a new “Experts at Hand” service). - Specialist support
– For children with complex needs that cannot be met in typical classroom settings, often involving specialist provision packages.
EHCPs Under the Proposed Framework
EHCPs would continue to exist, but will only be for children whose needs cannot be met in a mainstream setting. The document redefines EHCPs as existing “[to] offer a wider legal entitlement beyond the ISP to more intensive or complex support than schools can routinely provide.”
The idea is that schools and placements will become responsible for assessing, and planning, support. This seeks to essentially be a replacement for the statutory assessment process and, in many cases, EHCPs.
Individual Support Plans (ISPs)
To formalise the school-based interventions, and what the school plan to do, the reforms introduce Individual Support Plans (ISPs). Every child receiving Targeted or Specialist support will have an ISP created by the education setting. The ISP will be a legally required document describing the specific, evidence-based support that a child will receive and guiding the interventions that should be provided. It is not clear if there will be a set format for the ISPs. I would hope so; the range of EHCPs is bad enough, but leaving ISPs to schools to design individually could be horrific.
Legal Status and Enforceability of ISPs
It would appear that the intention is for the Individual Support Plans (ISPs) to be enforceable. They will be statutory plans, created by the child’s school, setting out specific support and interventions drawn from a national framework of evidence-based practice.
Unlike the current tiered system — where only a minority of children have a formal Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP) with enforceable legal rights — ISPs would effectively provide a statutory right to support for most children with SEND.
Practically, this means that schools will be required to assess need, to deliver specified interventions and to document them in a plan that the family can rely on. The strength of that legal entitlement will, however, depend critically on how enforcement mechanisms — including appeal rights and dispute resolution — are defined in secondary legislation and guidance.
The White Paper recognises that in the short to medium term, this approach will actually increase the demand;
“The proportion of school children with an EHCP is currently 5.3%, and has risen sharply. We expect that EHCP numbers will increase but at a slower rate through to 2029 to 2030 as we begin to invest in the new system and equip mainstream nurseries, schools and colleges to meet needs earlier. As reforms become embedded, we expect the number of children and young people needing a Specialist Provision Package, and hence an EHCP to access support, will return to around today’s level by 2035, with many more children having their needs met through an ISP in mainstream”
Are EHCPs Being Abolished?
No. The current legal framework remains in force, and the consultation documents do not propose abolishing Education, Health and Care Plans.
The Children and Families Act 2014 continues to govern EHCPs, and the consultation documents do not propose removing them altogether. Instead, the reforms suggest that EHCPs would be reserved for a narrower group of children with the most complex needs, described within the consultation as those requiring a “Specialist Provision Package”.
The practical effect of that shift could be significant. If eligibility thresholds become more stringent, fewer children may qualify for a statutory plan, even though EHCPs technically remain part of the system. The reform is therefore not abolition, but potential restriction.
Much will depend on how eligibility criteria are defined in legislation and guidance following consultation. Until those changes are enacted, existing EHCP rights and protections remain in place.
EHCP Eligibility and Threshold Changes
The White Paper reiterates that EHCPs are intended for young people with the most complex needs. In some ways though, the definition is unclear, because the White Paper suggests that children whose needs cannot routinely be met in mainstream provision will continue to be eligible for EHCPs. This is a very similar description to the current test of ‘necessity’ – the reforms are really targeting when that necessity arises, rather than the test itself.
There are a couple of immediate concerns though:
- Thresholds for EHCP eligibility may become more stringent, potentially excluding children who would previously have qualified.
- The enforceability, and ‘appealability’ of EHCPs may become diluted.
The White Paper proposes transitional safeguards, through a “triple lock”, to protect young people with EHCPs. But the breadth of those protections and how they will operate in practice remains under consultation.
Given that, again, the narrative for these proposals is heavily focussed on children being in mainstream schools, the issue of ‘placement’ in EHCPS is concerning. The reforms have waded in heavily. SEND reform: putting children and young people first sets out that there will still be the ability to appeal to the Tribunal if they disagree with an LA’s placement decision. But, the document requires that “placement decisions will be made in a much more consistent and fair way, with preferences made less in isolation and more holistically, with a better focus on quality and a suitable placement close to home.” in other words, there is a very strong suggestion that placement decisions are taken on a larger scale basis than currently, which exclusively consider the young person’s needs.
This concern is supported by the suggestion that “weight must be put on the evidence of the effectiveness of the provision, value for money, and fairness in future decisions about placements. This might include requiring the LA to consider overall value for money and the impact of making a single higher cost placement, for example in an Independent Special School (ISS), on the ability to meet the needs of all children and young people in the area.”
Entitlements and Appeals
Current Tribunal Rights Under the Existing Framework
Currently, the system allows for families to challenge decisions made by their local authority to a specialist Tribunal – the First-tier Tribunal (Special Educational Needs and Disability). This Tribunal deals with a range of types of appeal, but in essence if a local authority refuses to assess, make an EHCP, or the EHCP is not accepted by the family, the Tribunal can consider an appeal.
Proposed Changes to EHCP Appeal Rights
The proposals are to substantially narrow the group of children entitled to that appeal mechanism.
Because EHCPs would be restricted to a smaller cohort of children with the most complex needs, fewer families would have access to tribunal appeal rights. While the consultation indicates that tribunal rights would remain in place for those who continue to qualify for EHCPs, the overall effect of tightening eligibility is that a reduced number of children would benefit from those statutory appeal protections.
What Happens to ISP Disputes?
For the majority of children supported through the new Individual Support Plans, the position would be different. ISPs are proposed as a legally required form of support, but they are not described as carrying the same direct right of appeal to the tribunal.
Disagreements about an ISP – including the support specified, and whether or not to escalate to an EHCP – would instead be addressed through internal school processes or local authority review mechanisms. These routes obviously do not provide the same level of independence or enforceability as a tribunal appeal.
The reforms also shift practical responsibility for many decisions more directly toward schools and settings, rather than local authorities alone. This has implications for challenge routes: where schools play a more central role in determining provision through ISPs, parents are likely to begin by challenging decisions within the institution or through complaints procedures, rather than proceeding directly to a statutory appeal.
Although the consultation materials state that EHCP appeal rights would be preserved for those who meet the revised threshold, the longer-term impact could include reassessment of existing plans against new criteria. If children currently holding EHCPs no longer meet the updated eligibility requirements and move onto ISPs, they would lose access to tribunal appeal rights tied specifically to EHCP decisions. In practical terms, this would mean that independent legal oversight becomes concentrated on a smaller population.
Loss of Tribunal Power to Name a School
Of particular concern, the reform specifically suggests that if an EHCP is the subject of an appeal, whilst the Tribunal may agree that the school named is not suitable, it would not have the power to name a different school. Instead, the Tribunal could only require a ‘reconsideration’ by the local authority. That, in my view, could well mean that the Judicial Review courts are about to get a lot more busy.
Taken together, the proposals suggest a considerable change. The current framework provides broad access to an independent tribunal for a wide range of EHCP-related disputes. The proposed system would retain that right, but for a much narrower group. Most disagreements about SEND support would be resolved through internal complaints procedures, rather than through the tribunal. The central change, therefore, is not the removal of tribunal rights altogether, but the reduction in the number of children and families able to access them, and the corresponding shift from independent legal challenge toward locally managed resolution mechanisms
The Timetable
The timetable suggests as follows:
- aligning to best practice from the 2025 to 2026 academic year
- preparing for SEND and curriculum reforms from the 2026 to 2027 academic year
- full implementation from the 2028 to 2029 academic year
As mentioned above, the White Paper proposes transitional safeguards, through a “triple lock”, to protect young people with EHCPs. But the breadth of those protections and how they will operate in practice remains under consultation.
Practical and Legal Implications
For everyone involved in SEND, including families, children, young people, and professionals, these proposals are significant.
On the one hand, there is a suggestion of expanding statutory rights to support beyond EHCPs, through statutory ISPs for nearly all children identified with SEND. This could mean clearer, enforceable plans for support that previously rested on discretionary practice.
At the same time, the EHCP eligibility is going to change, focusing on Specialist Provision Packages and a more national-led consideration, and resource based decision making, rather than a needs-led system.
What is hugely disappointing is that in response to the complaint that the SEND system is already too complex, and required families to navigate systems, these proposals introduce new layers of disagreement. Crucially, families will need to understand how to navigate complaints and dispute resolution in a landscape where Tribunal appeal rights for ISP decisions are not automatic. The ability to, and process for, raising matters with the Tribunal will be in addition to this.
Finally, the shift towards universal early support within mainstream schools means that many decisions about support quality, intervention deployment and inclusive culture will now be made locally, within schools and trusts, rather than solely through local authorities’ statutory processes. This immediately means that families must engage proactively with school leadership, SENCOs and local partners while also understanding the compliance obligations schools now assume in law.
In Summary
These reforms are not happening right away. This is the beginning of a long process.
In theory, there is much to like about these suggestions. Early Intervention has been an issue I have been raising for years, relying on substantive research from the Early Intervention Foundation.
In addition, the investment in more training for more specialists, and sharing of good practice are all very positive moves forward.
By contrast, there is a very real danger that this system is going to be ‘imposed’ on families. There is a very real prospect for entrenchment, and local deviation in provision, leading to further disadvantage. The introduction of additional layers of process, increased pressure on schools and the potential for more disputes between families and education settings raise legitimate concerns.
We routinely assist families navigate the ever complex SEN system. If you need help ensuring your child receives the education they deserve, get in touch with us:
Tel: 0333 202 7175
Email: education@hcbgroup.com