What is an annual review of an EHC plan?

Your Education Health and Care Plan needs to be reviewed by the Local Authority at least every 12 months to make sure that it still supports you. This is called an ‘annual review’.

The annual review is a meeting for you to say what you think about the current plan, talk about what is going well and what is not working well.

You can ask for further help or support that you think you need. 

The following steps make up the annual review: 

• The school/college or other setting will ask you for your views about your current Education, Health and Care Plan(EHC plan)
• A date will be set, and a meeting arranged to talk about your EHC Plan
• The SENCO will ask for information from your teachers or tutors, your parents/carers and anyone else that has been working with you to help them to make decisions about your plan
• Within 4 weeks after the Review the Local Authority will tell you if they are going to keep your EHC plan the same, make changes to it or cease it

You might find our Making decisions section helpful when preparing for a review. Found here.

If you are unhappy with anything that happens in your review, then you can fill in our young person contact form to ask to talk with our team about this.

You might find it helpful to watch this video from the CDC about annual reviews: 

What is an Annual Review of an Education, Health and Social Care (EHC) plan?

Leeds SENDIASS have also made a video to show what happens in an annual review if you click on the link below.

What is an annual review meeting? 

Person Centred planning is about involving you in this review. It is a way of making sure that your views are taken into account and are central to the EHC plan as it will affect you. 

You may find the following video helps you to understand what Person-Centred planning is. 

The EHCP and The Person Centred Connection

If things have changed for you and/ or you feel that you need more support, it may mean that your EHC plan needs to be looked at again (reviewed).    

It might be that:    

• you think you need some more or some different support
• something has changed with your health or social care needs
• you think that you need a change of school, college or setting
• there is a big change coming up that you want some help and support to prepare for

If there is not a review happening soon, you can still speak to your school, college and/ or local authority caseworker about your concerns and you can ask for your plan to be reviewed earlier.  The local authority will decide if this is necessary.

From year 9 onwards your EHC Plan reviews should think about ‘preparing for adulthood’. 

This is to help you to: 

• prepare for higher education or employment
• prepare you to be able to live independently
• be part of your community, develop relationships and friendships
• be as healthy as possible in your adult life

To find out more about this, visit our Preparation for Adulthood page, or you can visit CDC Preparing For Adulthood

The video below on Preparation for Adulthood will give you more details on what this means:  

Preparing For Adulthood Outcomes

A Local Authority may decide to stop your EHC plan (often called cease to maintain) at any time but it can only do this in two situations. This can only be done following an annual review meeting.

The two reasons that they might cease the EHC plan is if the Local Authority is no longer responsible, for example, if you move to a new Local Authority.

Or if the Local Authority decides the EHC plan is no longer necessary.

The Local Authority must inform you and they must consult to the head teacher or Principal, or college named in your EHC plan. The Local Authority must consider your views, wishes and feelings and explain why they still think it is best to cease.

You will receive a decision letter from the Local Authority saying they are considering stopping your EHC plan and it will give details of how you can appeal this decision.  

If you do not think that you need your EHC Plan anymore, speak to your school, college or setting about this.  You can also speak to your Local Authority SEND Casework Officer.  

Before making this decision, you may want to discuss it with a trusted adult and visit our Making decisions page.