Disclosure Log

EHCP Special School Waiting Lists and Independent Placements (FOI/8452)

Message from Nottinghamshire County Council - 02 September 2026

Questions & Answers)
As at the date of your response, please provide the following information regarding children and young people with an Education, Health and Care (EHC) Plan in your local authority area:

The number of children/young people with an EHC Plan who are currently awaiting allocation of a special school place.

We have 448 children and young people awaiting a special school place.

The number of children/young people currently educated otherwise than at school (e.g. via a Section 19 arrangement) while awaiting a specialist placement.

We have 35 Children and young people who are EOTAS awaiting a special school placement.

The number of children/young people currently receiving interim or alternative tuition while awaiting a specialist placement.

We do not hold this information. We currently have 6,916 plans, and checking each individual child record would take approximately 4 to 5 minutes. Therefore, we will be claiming an exemption under section 12 of the FOIA for this request.

The number of children/young people placed in an independent special school because no maintained (state) special school place was available.

The average waiting time, in weeks, between an EHC Plan naming a school or type of provision and the child/young person starting at that placement, for the most recent 12 months for which you hold data.

Nottinghamshire County Council (NCC) does not hold this information in a readily retrievable format.

To determine whether a child or young person with an Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP) is currently receiving interim or alternative tuition while awaiting a specialist placement, it would be necessary to review individual case records. The Council currently maintains approximately 6,916 EHCPs, and it is estimated that each record would take between 4 and 5 minutes to review.

Based on this estimate:

6,916 records × 4 minutes = 27,664 minutes (approximately 461 hours)
6,916 records × 5 minutes = 34,580 minutes (approximately 576 hours)

The Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004 set an appropriate limit of 18 hours for local authorities. As compliance with this part of the request would require between 461 and 576 hours to identify, locate, retrieve and extract the requested information, the Council estimates that the cost of complying would substantially exceed the appropriate limit.

Accordingly, this information is exempt under Section 12(1) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, which provides that a public authority is not obliged to comply with a request where the cost of doing so would exceed the prescribed limit.

Section 16 - Advice and Assistance
Under Section 16 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, public authorities have a duty to provide advice and assistance where reasonable to do so. We have considered whether this element of your request could be refined to fall within the cost limit. However, as the information is not held in a report, dataset or other centrally recorded format and can only be identified through a manual review of individual case files, we are unable to suggest a practical refinement that would enable us to provide an accurate response within the statutory time limit.

Should you wish to submit a revised request for information that is held in a readily reportable format, we would be happy to consider this.

A breakdown of (1) above by primary type of need (e.g. ASD, SEMH, SLCN, MLD, other), if held.

Nottinghamshire County Council (NCC) does not hold this information in a readily retrievable format; therefore, this question is exempt under Section 12 of the FOIA, please refer to question 5 answer (above) for our reasoning.