Have requests for EHCPs passed their peak? It might be expected that where a local authority was starting to witness a shrinking school population that this might also be noticeable in a decline in requests for an EHCP.
I have tested out this these for the London boroughs, based on the DfE’s data on total requests for an EHCP for each year from 2019 (pre-covid) to 2025, (the latest set of annual data published). Release home – Education, health and care plans – Explore education statistics – GOV.UK
Column 2 shows the growth in request over the period from 2019 to 2026 (in one case a small decline) Column 3 shows the percentage increase over the period, ranked from smallest percentage increase to the largest. Column 4 is my interpretation of whether the borough is an inner London or an outer London borough
| LA | 2013-2019 | % increase | subregion |
| 1 | -3 | -38% | inner |
| 2 | 34 | 5% | inner |
| 3 | 12 | 9% | inner |
| 4 | 84 | 18% | inner |
| 5 | 115 | 21% | inner |
| 6 | 195 | 23% | outer |
| 7 | 72 | 36% | inner |
| 8 | 85 | 37% | inner |
| 9 | 210 | 39% | outer |
| 10 | 100 | 41% | outer |
| 11 | 178 | 42% | outer |
| 12 | 114 | 47% | outer |
| 13 | 400 | 55% | outer |
| 14 | 297 | 57% | outer |
| 15 | 243 | 58% | outer |
| 16 | 298 | 65% | inner |
| 17 | 276 | 65% | outer |
| 18 | 195 | 68% | inner |
| 19 | 321 | 72% | inner |
| 20 | 352 | 73% | outer |
| 21 | 313 | 80% | outer |
| 22 | 157 | 86% | inner |
| 23 | 146 | 87% | outer |
| 24 | 534 | 91% | outer |
| 25 | 488 | 95% | inner |
| 26 | 292 | 97% | outer |
| 27 | 497 | 101% | outer |
| 28 | 395 | 101% | outer |
| 29 | 392 | 105% | outer |
| 30 | 501 | 110% | inner |
| 31 | 432 | 115% | inner |
| 32 | 345 | 117% | outer |
| 33 | 376 | 133% | outer |
Thirty-two boroughs showed an increase in requests over the period between 2019 and 2025. Increases ranged from less than 10% in each of two inner London boroughs to seven boroughs with increases of more than 100% increase over the period between 2019-2025 (5 outer London boroughs and two inner London boroughs).
In 14 of the boroughs, the number of requests received by the borough in 2025 was not the highest for any years during the period between 2019-2025. Is that enough to suggest a trend? Possibly so, especially if the key point for many requests for an EHCP is around the transfer point form primary to secondary school.
Does the distribution of the boroughs suggest that inner London boroughs have a smaller percentage of pupils requiring an EHCP, or perhaps a smaller percentage of parents initiating the process of requesting an EHCP? It would be helpful to rerun this exercise for particular types of EHCP and the age of the child at which they were requested. Might this deeper analysis help to explain some of the differences in the percentage increases between boroughs?
It is interesting that some London boroughs with a mix of selective and non-selective schools feature among the boroughs with the highest percentage increase over the period.
If data for individual schools is not available, then measuring the percentage of the borough in each IDACII cell might provide data on any clustering. A simpler way might be to use parliamentary constituencies, but both of these measure of requests suffer from a possible ‘parental choice’ effect. The use of boroughs more closely ties requests linked to residence not to school attended.
If I have a moment, I will look at the data for the top and bottom 20 places regarded by the Children’s Commissioner in her recent report as the best and worst places for children to grow up.
