CORNWALL Council is doing “an awful lot” to help fix a crisis with the number of children requiring special educational and disabilities (SEND) needs in the county.

A council meeting heard on Wednesday (March 5) that complaints about its SEND service have drastically reduced in the past year.

Many of the complaints the council receives concern education, health and care (EHC) plans being provided within the necessary timeframe for pupils. This is a legal document which outlines a child’s educational, health and social care needs, specifically for those with special educational needs. Like the rest of the country, Cornwall is facing a huge increase in the number of children requiring EHC assessments.

The news of improvements comes less than two months after around 50 parents protested outside Lys Kernow / County Hall in Truro. Many of the parents with neurodiverse children said their SEND needs weren’t being listened to by Cornwall Council. Some of the children haven’t had a formal education for months or even years.

Les Hall, the council’s SEND operations manager, told a meeting of the local authority’s children and families scrutiny committee: “Throughout the year complaints performance has improved, meaning there’s a removal of the backlog of complaints which was most pronounced in July last year. It’s resulted in a reduction of the number of Stage 2 complaints and Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman (LGSCO) complaints, which hopefully will result in a reduction in tribunals.

“At the end of the day we’re improving the provision for young people and that’s what the complaints were about. There are still massive amounts of requests coming in, so the timeliness is a focus for us. If we can bring down the waiting times then we will reduce further the number of complaints that we receive.”

A committee report reiterated that a backlog of complaints, which was leading to increased LGSCO complaints, has been resolved and now more complaints are being resolved on time. This is largely due to the increase in capacity in the Inclusion & SEND service delivered by the additional fixed term roles of a resolutions & solutions officer and a tribunals and LGSCO officer.

There are 5,039 EHC plans currently in place in Cornwall as of January this year, while the number EHC needs assessment requests received from January 2024 to January 2025 was 741. The average number of new requests received monthly since September last year is 105.

Cllr Mike Thomas highlighted the recent family protest, saying: “There were many people outside this building who were very concerned about a number of issues, which they were sharing with us and were very upsetting. So there is a concern that this looks superb but there’s a genuine concern from some families that they are just not getting what they need.

“I feel I need to voice that sense that everything looks great, but I’m certainly conscious that there are people out there who do feel that – although there might be improved communication – it’s the quality of the answer they’re getting.”

Committee chair Cllr James Mustoe said the protest was about very specific, localised issues. The meeting was told that officers regularly look at thematic complaints which can then be addressed.

Cllr Mike Bunney asked how Cornwall compared to the UK-wide picture because “it’s fair to say that it’s a concern across the United Kingdom – have you got any feeling of how our proportion of complaints compares to other parts of the UK?”

Mr Hall replied: “I don’t think it’s dissimilar. I think across the whole country SEND is in crisis and we’re doing an awful lot to help fix that crisis in Cornwall. In many ways, we’re ahead of the curve in some of the things that we’re doing.”

Cllr Brian Clemens asked if there any new directives under the Labour government which were making life easier to assess ECHPs. Kate Evan-Hughes, strategic director for the council’s Together for Families directive, said: “We are advised that there will be SEND reform – there will be change in legislation but the detail of that reform is not yet available.”

In the past 12 months there have been ten complaints relating to Inclusion & SEND Services referred to the LGSCO. There is also regular crossover with the Education Effectiveness Service, where a further case has been referred. Of the cases referred, four were upheld (five including Education Effectiveness) relating to the Inclusion & SEND Service. This is an improvement on the previous calendar year where eight decisions were upheld between Inclusion & SEND and Education Effectiveness Services.

“There is work under way in Cornwall to undertake specific interventions as part of the SEND transformation plan. Across the local area SEND system we are starting to see promising results. Longer-term funding is required to ensure these initiatives are sustainable and provide long term improvements to the experiences of young people with SEN in Cornwall,” added the report.