Keeping an EHCP into college and beyond

In England, an Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP) does not end just because your young person turns 16 or 18. It can continue to age 25 while they stay in education or training and still need the support in it. There is no automatic right to a plan until 25, though: the test is continuing need, not age.

Your young person is finishing school, the talk has turned to college, and somewhere along the way someone has hinted that the plan is about to run out. Maybe a tutor said plans “stop at 16,” or the council mentioned closing it once they leave school. If that has left you worried that the support is about to vanish, take a breath. It doesn’t work like that.

This is a guide for parents and carers in England. The framework comes from the Children and Families Act 2014 and the SEND Regulations 2014 made under it, so it applies to local authorities (the council departments that issue and maintain plans, each one an LA) in England. (Sources checked June 2026.)

Does an EHCP end at 16 or 18?

No. An EHCP doesn’t end at 16, and it doesn’t end at 18 either. It can stay in place up to the age of 25, as long as your young person remains in education or training and still needs the special educational provision the plan secures.

The age-25 ceiling doesn’t come from one tidy clause that says “plans last until 25.” It’s built from two parts of the same Act. First, section 83 of the Children and Families Act 2014 defines a “young person” as someone over compulsory school age but under 25. Second, section 45 sets out the only grounds on which a council may stop maintaining the plan. Together they mean an EHCP can run for the whole 16-to-25 window, not that it must.

Here is the part councils sometimes skip. There is no automatic entitlement to a plan up to 25. The government’s own guidance is blunt: a local authority “must not cease an EHC plan simply because a young person is aged 19 or over,” but neither is there “an automatic entitlement to continued support at age 19,” as the gov.uk guidance on EHC plans for 19 to 25 year-olds puts it.

So the question is never “how old are they?” It’s “do they still need this support to finish their education or training?” That keeps the plan alive when a council reaches for an age-based excuse.

In short, the council has to look at need, evidence and outcomes, not the calendar. If the only reason offered for closing the plan is your young person’s age, that reason isn’t a lawful one.

Who decides about the EHCP once your young person turns 16?

Your young person does, not you. At the end of compulsory school age, the right to make EHCP decisions transfers by law from the parent to the young person, under Part 3 of the Children and Families Act 2014. From that point the council should be writing to them, seeking their views, and treating them as the decision-maker.

The timing surprises a lot of families, because it isn’t the 16th birthday. Compulsory school age ends on the last Friday in June of the academic year in which your young person turns 16, near the end of Year 11. That’s a fixed date, the same for everyone in the year group, and it’s when the rights move across.

After that date, your young person is the one who can request a needs assessment, name a preferred college, ask for mediation and appeal to the First-tier Tribunal (SEND), the independent tribunal that hears EHCP appeals. They don’t have to do any of it alone. They can ask you to help, sit in on meetings and read the letters, and most do. The legal right just sits with them now.

Capacity matters here too. The Mental Capacity Act 2005 (MCA) applies from age 16. It starts from a presumption that your young person can make their own decisions, unless an assessment shows otherwise, under section 1 of the Mental Capacity Act 2005. Where a 16 or 17 year old genuinely can’t make a particular decision, you usually step in as the default decision-maker because you still hold parental responsibility.

That changes at 18. Parental responsibility ends. So if an adult young person lacks capacity, you need formal authority to act for them, such as a Lasting Power of Attorney, a Court of Protection deputyship, or an “alternative person” appointed by the Tribunal for an appeal. If that’s your situation, our guide to the transition to adult services at 18 covers the adult social care side, which is a separate legal world from the 16-to-25 education rights described here.

When can the council lawfully stop the EHCP after 16?

Only on two grounds, and age isn’t one of them. Under section 45 of the Children and Families Act 2014, a council may cease to maintain an EHCP only if it’s no longer responsible for the young person, or it determines the plan is no longer necessary. Everything else is not a lawful basis to close the plan.

“No longer necessary” is the ground councils lean on, so it pays to know what it actually means. It doesn’t mean the course has ended or a birthday has passed. It means the special educational provision in the plan is genuinely no longer needed to meet your young person’s needs, judged on current evidence from professionals, not on a tidy assumption about their age.

For a young person over 18 there’s an extra safeguard built into the test. When deciding whether the plan is still necessary, the council must consider whether the educational or training outcomes in the plan have been achieved, under section 45(3). If those outcomes aren’t met, that points towards keeping the plan, not ending it. There’s a further protection in Regulation 30 of the SEND Regulations 2014: before a council ceases the plan of an over-18 who has stopped attending, it must first review the plan and confirm they don’t want to return to education or training.

The pattern is clear once you see it side by side. A lawful cease decision is about whether your young person still needs the support. An unlawful one is about age, setting or budget. If a council gives you a reason from the right-hand column, it has misread the law, and you can say so in writing and quote section 45 back to them.

What is the 31 March deadline for moving to college?

It is the hard date by which the council must finalise your young person’s amended EHCP and name their post-16 placement. Where a young person is transferring from secondary school to a post-16 institution, the council must review and amend the plan first. It must then name the college or sixth form in Section I before 31 March in the calendar year of transfer, under Regulation 18 of the SEND Regulations 2014.

That date isn’t a council target or a courtesy. It’s a statutory deadline. (For other phase transfers, such as primary to secondary, the equivalent date is 15 February.) The point of 31 March is to give your family certainty about where your young person is going. It leaves time to appeal Section I if the named placement is wrong.

Getting there on time means starting early. The work that secures a strong post-16 plan happens at the annual review long before the deadline. From Year 9 at the latest, every annual review must include planning for adulthood across four outcomes: employment, independent living, community participation and health. That is set out in chapter 8 of the SEND Code of Practice 0 to 25. It is your lever for getting the right post-16 provision written into the plan before the move.

1. 1
   Year 9 annual review

   Preparing for adulthood planning begins: employment, independent living, community, health

   From age 13 to 14
2. 2
   Year 11 annual review

   Updated professional evidence, the post-16 destination discussed and named

   The year before transfer
3. 3
   Council finalises the plan

   The amended EHCP is issued naming the college or sixth form in Section I

   Before 31 March
4. 4
   Appeal window, if needed

   Challenge the named placement at the Tribunal while there is still time before September

   After the final plan

If 31 March slips and no placement is named, don’t wait quietly over the summer. Put the missed deadline in writing, name Regulation 18, and ask the council to confirm the place in time for you to appeal if you need to. A late or missing post-16 plan is delay, and our guide on what to do when the council misses an EHCP deadline sets out the routes for chasing it.

Does an EHCP cover college, sixth form, a supported internship or an apprenticeship?

Yes to college, sixth form and supported internships, and it can apply to an apprenticeship too. An EHCP can name a school sixth form, a further education college, a specialist college or an apprenticeship provider in Section I. The council still has to secure the special educational provision in Section F wherever your young person is placed.

That Section F duty is the engine of the whole thing. Under section 42 of the Children and Families Act 2014, the council must secure the special educational provision in the plan. Where the plan specifies health care provision, the relevant Integrated Care Board (ICB, the NHS body that commissions local health services) must arrange it. That duty doesn’t weaken because your young person has moved from school to college.

A supported internship is the option most parents haven’t heard of and most want once they have. It’s a structured, mostly workplace-based study programme for young people who have an EHCP. To be eligible, “a young person must be aged between 16 and 24 and have an EHC plan,” as the gov.uk supported internships guidance states. They last a minimum of six months and up to a year, with interns spending around 70% of their time in a real workplace.

One honest caveat on pay. Supported interns are unpaid and exempt from National Minimum Wage (NMW) regulation, because they’re in full-time education learning the skills for work. That’s a deliberate feature of the model, not a loophole, but it’s worth knowing before your young person starts.

Apprenticeships are the one to handle with care. An EHCP can continue alongside an apprenticeship, and the council still must not cease a plan without a proper section 45 review. Beyond that, the precise funding rules at different apprenticeship levels are detailed and change year to year, so check the current position rather than relying on a general claim.

Can the council cap your young person’s hours or days post-16?

No, not with a blanket cap. A council can’t impose a one-size-fits-all rule like “all young people only get three days a week post-16.” The duty in section 42 to secure the provision in Section F is absolute. The provision must follow your young person’s individual assessed need, not an age-related or budget-driven cap.

This comes up a lot at the move to college, because some councils run an unwritten policy of cutting post-16 packages to fewer days and expecting work experience or care at home to fill the gap. Where a young person’s assessed needs require a full timetable, and Section F specifies it, the council must secure it.

The defence works best when Section F is specific. Provision should be quantified: the number of hours, the number of days, and what happens on each. Vague wording like “access to support as needed” is hard to enforce, while “1:1 support for 15 hours per week” isn’t. If your young person’s plan is woolly, that’s something to firm up at the next review.

If a blanket cap is applied to your young person, you can challenge it. Put in writing that section 42 requires provision based on individual assessed need, not an age-related entitlement, and ask for an urgent annual review to make Section F specify the hours and days they actually require.

What can you do if college tries to drop the support?

Move quickly, in writing, and in the right order. If a college or council is reducing or removing support your young person is entitled to, the same routes that protect a school-age plan protect a post-16 one. The plan is enforceable, and the people responsible can be held to it.

Start with the plan itself. Read Section F and check exactly what provision is specified, then write to the council’s special educational needs (SEN) team setting out what should be happening and what is not. Quote section 42 and ask for it to be put right. Keep the tone factual and dated, because a clear paper trail is what makes the later steps work.

If the issue is a decision you can challenge, such as a refusal to maintain the plan or the placement named in Section I, that goes to the First-tier Tribunal (SEND). An appeal must usually be lodged within two months of the council’s decision letter, or one month from a mediation certificate, whichever is later. Most EHCP appeals need you to contact a mediation adviser first, though an appeal only about the Section I placement is exempt, under section 55 of the Children and Families Act 2014.

If the problem isn’t a decision but a failure, such as the council simply not delivering what Section F says, that’s a different route again. Delay and non-delivery are challenged through the council’s complaint process and then the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman, or judicial review for an urgent breach. Our guide on who to complain to when SEND support fails maps out which forum handles what, so you don’t lose months in the wrong one.

Getting help

You don’t have to work this out alone, and several free services specialise in exactly this stage.

IPSEA (Independent Provider of Special Education Advice) gives free, legally based advice on post-16 EHCPs, cease decisions and hour caps, and publishes model letters you can adapt. Their advice line is a strong first call when a council is talking about closing a plan.

Your local SENDIASS (Special Educational Needs and Disability Information, Advice and Support Service) offers free, impartial support in every area and can help your young person, and you, understand the post-16 process. Every council runs one; find yours through the gov.uk find-your-local-council tool.

Council for Disabled Children publishes clear explainers on preparing for adulthood and the 16-to-25 system, useful for understanding how the rights fit together.

Contact runs a free helpline for families with disabled children and can talk through the practical and emotional side of the move to college.

SOS!SEN runs a free helpline and clinics on EHCPs, including post-16 disputes and appeals.

National Careers Service offers free pathway guidance for your young person on post-16 options, including supported internships and apprenticeships.

How our free tool can help

The assistant at SEND Parents Help can explain whether your young person’s EHCP should continue post-16, work out who now holds the decision-making rights, and check whether a cease reason a council has given is lawful. It can also help you draft a firm letter quoting the right sections, or get an annual review request worded so the post-16 provision is nailed down before the 31 March deadline.

It won’t replace legal advice in an urgent appeal, but it can get you organised, dated and confident about what to ask for, which is often what turns a wavering plan into a settled one.

Sources and further reading

Legislation

• Children and Families Act 2014, section 42 (duty to secure provision)
• Children and Families Act 2014, section 45 (ceasing to maintain a plan)
• Children and Families Act 2014, section 83 (definition of “young person”)
• Children and Families Act 2014, Part 3 (the SEND framework)
• Children and Families Act 2014, section 55 (mediation before appeal, Section I exemption)
• SEND Regulations 2014, Regulation 18 (phase-transfer deadlines)
• SEND Regulations 2014, Regulation 30 (ceasing a plan for an over-18 who has left education)
• Mental Capacity Act 2005, section 1 (presumption of capacity)

Official guidance

• SEND Code of Practice 0 to 25
• gov.uk: EHC plans for 19 to 25 year-olds
• gov.uk: supported internships
• gov.uk: extra SEN help and who an EHC plan is for

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