If you’re in the middle of fighting for support for your child, it can feel like you’re the only one doing this. You’re not. Hundreds of thousands of other parents and carers are at the same table, filling in the same forms, chasing the same councils. The numbers that follow won’t fix that, but they might explain why everything feels harder than it should.
An Education, health and care plan (EHCP) is the strongest form of support in the SEND system in England. It’s a legal document that sets out a child or young person’s needs and the specific support a council must put in place to meet them. More children have one than ever before, and the number is still rising.
In January 2026 there were 718,838 EHCPs in force in England. That’s up 12.5% in a single year, the largest annual rise since EHCPs were introduced in 2014, and more than double the number in 2019. This report sets out what the Department for Education’s official figures show about how many children have a plan, how quickly that’s growing, and which needs the plans are for.
More than doubled in seven years
This isn’t a sudden surge or a post-pandemic blip. The number of plans in force has risen every single year, and the climb has been steady and steep for the better part of a decade.
DfE, Education, health and care plans, 2026
Plans in force rose from 354,000 in January 2019 to 718,838 in January 2026, around 2 times as many. The pipeline feeding those numbers is growing too: councils issued 110,708 new plans in 2025, up 13.3% on the year, after receiving 162,702 requests for an assessment. More families are asking. More plans are being issued. And the queues are getting longer.
If it feels harder to get a plan, and slower, the numbers are part of the reason. Demand is at record levels and councils are under real strain. That pressure doesn’t change your child’s rights or the legal deadlines, but it does mean it’s worth knowing the process and the timescales before you start.
What the plans are for
When a council issues an EHCP, it records a child’s primary type of need. Knowing which needs are most common matters for you, because it tells you how well understood your child’s situation is likely to be at a tribunal, in a school, or in a council’s own processes. A small number of need types account for the vast majority of plans.
DfE, Education, health and care plans, 2026
Autism is the single most common primary need, recorded on 31.5% of all plans, covering 226,723 children. Speech, language and communication needs come next, then social, emotional and mental health. If your child’s needs fall into one of these categories, you’re navigating a well-trodden path, and there’s more written guidance, more case law, and more precedent in your favour than you might expect.
A “primary need” label is an administrative category, not the whole picture. Many children have more than one area of need, and the label recorded is just the one the council treats as the main one. It doesn’t limit the support a plan can include. A plan must cover all of your child’s needs, whatever the headline category says.
Who has a plan
Plans are concentrated in the primary and early secondary years, but they reach right across childhood and into early adulthood. If you’re wondering whether it’s too early or too late to apply, the age breakdown below is worth a look.
DfE, Education, health and care plans, 2026
About seven in ten plans are for children aged 5 to 15. Only 3.9% are for children under 5, which reflects how long it can take for needs to be identified and a plan to be agreed. If your child is young and you’re just starting to notice something is different, the process takes time, and the earlier you start it the better. At the other end, a quarter of plans are for young people aged 16 to 25. An EHCP can continue well beyond school if your young person is still in education or training, and they can take an active role in managing it themselves from age 16.
What this means for your family
Record demand is the backdrop to almost every SEND battle parents and carers face right now. The system is stretched, and knowing the rules matters more than ever when you’re up against a council that is overstretched and under-resourced.
The legal deadline has not moved. Once you ask for an assessment, the council has 20 weeks to issue a final plan if it agrees to assess and the child meets the criteria. The law allows a small number of specific exceptions, such as a school being closed for a month or more during the process, but being busy or under-resourced is not one of them. Busy councils do not get an extension, and “we are very busy” is not a lawful reason to refuse or delay.
- If you are weighing up whether to start, what an EHCP is and whether your child needs one explains who plans are for.
- When you are ready, how to request an EHC needs assessment walks through the request and the timescales.
- To see how long plans are actually taking where you live, see our report on EHCP timeliness by council.
- If a council refuses to assess, do not stop there. What to do when a council refuses to assess covers your right to challenge it.
Methodology and sources
All the figures in this report are from the Department for Education’s official statistics release Education, health and care plans, reporting year 2026, published on 25 June 2026. The count of plans in force, the breakdown by primary need and the breakdown by age are taken at the January 2026 snapshot. The figures for new plans issued and for requests for an assessment cover the 2025 calendar year.
The headline of 718,838 plans is the published England total; the need and age breakdowns each sum to that total. The statement that plans are just over double the 2019 level is our calculation, dividing the January 2026 total by the January 2019 total of 353,995 (2.03 times). The share for the three most common needs (75.3%) is our calculation, adding autism, speech and language needs, and social, emotional and mental health. The “all other needs” bar groups the eight smaller need categories, including a Down Syndrome line DfE split out as its own category for the first time this release (previously folded into “other difficulty/disability”). Note that the share of plans recorded as autism (31.5%) is not the same as the share of all pupils with SEN whose main need is autism, which uses a different and larger population; this report is about EHCPs specifically. Data accessed July 2026.