Extra educational psychologists are due to join Nottinghamshire’s SEND service to help tackle ‘challenging’ demands.
The announcement was made at Nottinghamshire County Council’s Children and Families Select Committee meeting on Monday (16 March).
Nottinghamshire’s special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) service is the responsibility of the County Council. In recent years, it has faced a sustained rise in demand and capacity pressures.
Updated figures presented at Monday’s meeting show the number of Education, Health and Care Plans (EHCPs) in Nottinghamshire has increased by 66 per cent in two years.
EHCPs are legal documents detailing the required support for a young person with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), and in December 2023 there were 3,741, rising to 5,364 in December 2024 and reaching 6,214 at the end of December 2025.
The county also saw its “highest recorded” number of EHC assessment requests in 2025, with 1,767 requested that year, up from 1,710 in 2024.
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With the growing demand for these assessments and capacity problems in educational psychology, the pace of EHCPs being issued has taken a hit, with only 31.8 per cent issued within the 20-week statutory timeframe, down from 37.5 per cent in 2024.
But from September 2026, six new full-time educational psychologists are set to join Nottinghamshire’s SEND service to help assessments be completed faster.
Speaking at Monday’s meeting, Councillor Teresa Cullen (Broxtowe Alliance) pointed out complaints in the SEND service remain high and the authority has 130 open tribunal cases in the department.
She asked: “What is wrong with the initial assessment that would cause so many tribunals? Complaints remain high, so something isn’t cutting the mustard.
“Do we know if the increase in demand is going to continue or if it’s cyclical?”
Orlaith Green, temporary director for educational learning and inclusion at the council, said the authority had seen a “significant increase” in assessment requests since the release of the Schools White Paper.
She said: “A significant proportion [of complaints] are about the timeliness of the assessments.
“Our teams are completing more assessments than ever before and producing more EHCPs than ever before, so more children are receiving their plans.
“There was a decision recently to invest further in educational psychologists – practitioners who complete these assessments.
“We’ve managed to increase our local authority educational psychology service by 55 per cent in the last three years – and that’s in the context of a national shortage of those professionals.”
Cllr Stephen Pearson (Con) said: “In terms of plans that are overdue, I’ve recently been approached by a constituent who says she’s been waiting, I think, 40 weeks for an assessment for her two sons, and I’m sure there are lots of other cases like that which are going well beyond the 20 weeks.
“In a child’s life, we’re talking about a long time. Once you’ve lost a year of education, you can’t really get that back, can you?”
Claire Sampson, head of statutory SEND services at the authority, said the service has to “prioritise” those children and young people who need their plans completed more “urgently”.
She referred to focusing on new and existing plans in the process as a “spinning of plates”, but said a system redesign has meant a team “purely focused” on EHC assessments has been in place since January to help meet demand.
The council has also been dealing with referrals for access to alternative provision, which is education outside of a mainstream school setting.
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Just this year, in January, it was reported that between 2022 and September 2025, the total number of new referrals for young people with an EHCP to access alternative provision increased by 381 per cent.
The Schools White Paper, published in February 2026, sets out the government’s plans to reform and change parts of the education system.
It includes proposals for SEND, including support being organised into tiers, all schools being required to develop individual support plans for each child with SEND regardless of which tier they fall into, inclusion bases in every school, and a £200 million investment over three years into school staff training for inclusive and adaptive teaching.
