Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP)
Introduction
An EHCP, or Education, Health and Care Plan, is a legal document in England for children and young people aged 0-25 who require significant additional support in their education. It outlines their special educational needs (SEN), the support they need, and the outcomes they aim to achieve. EHCPs are more comprehensive than SEN support and are issued after a formal assessment of a child’s needs.
SEND Regulations 2014 : Regulation 8 (1) states that “Where a local authority requests the co-operation of a body in securing an EHC needs assessment in accordance with Section 31 of the Act, that body must comply with such a request within 6 weeks of the date on which they receive it”.
A GP Practice is not a listed “body”, therefore there is no contractual requirement to complete these forms. GPs may however feel that they want to act in the best interests of their patients, so make a decision to complete the form. If this is the case, the practice may want to consider making an application to the Local Authority for reimbursement of “collaborative fees”, although past experience suggests that there is little likelihood of success in these situations so the amount of time put into this non contractual work may need to reflect that.
As with all non contractual work, our recommendation would be to check with your medical defence organisation that this is covered by your membership.
If GPs decide to undertake this work, they should only complete the form from the information they have regarding the child. This information may also have been requested from other health providers, i.e. tertiary specialists, Community Paediatricians or CAMHS providers so providing as much information as possible is obviously beneficial but it isn’t expected of the GP to provide a detailed history if the young person is known by other health professionals, more of a clinical oversight and detail of any specific treatment that is being provided by the GP practice. The primary reason that the GP may be being asked to provide health information is that they have oversight of all health contributions from differing services to a young person. If an Individual Healthcare Plan (IHP) is in place and the GP is aware of it we would expect it to be detailed in the response, but if not then obviously the GP cannot comment on it.
As at August 2026, National SEND reforms continue to be developed, but the current statutory EHCP framework remains unchanged and should continue to be followed.