Full delivery plan: problem, options, costs, risks and how to judge progress
The problem and who is affected
Portsmouth's school support page records gaps in family-facing case management and in audit evidence a family or councillor can see. Families can find it hard to know where an assessment or review has reached, who owns the next step and whether agreed support has started. Hampshire's EHC Hub is a real reference model for online assessments, plans, reviews and collaboration. That is not evidence that Portsmouth needs a new platform or could buy or copy one at a particular price: the first question is what existing council software and processes can already do.
Who is affected: Children and young people aged 0 to 25 with an EHC needs assessment, plan or annual review, their families, schools and the council SEND team.
Starting point: measured figures| Measure | Value | Period | Area |
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| Requests for an EHC needs assessment | 590 requests in 2025 (244 in 2019) | Calendar years 2019 and 2025 | Portsmouth City Council area |
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| New EHC plans issued within 20 weeks (excluding legal exceptions) This measures when a plan is issued, not when support starts. | 42.9% (220 of 513); England 46.1% | Calendar year 2025 | Portsmouth City Council area |
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| EHC plans maintained by the council | 2,616 | January 2026 | Portsmouth City Council area |
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What this would change
Aim: One authoritative, secure case record that families, schools and professionals can see in proportion to their role, with the status, deadlines and agreed provision visible and complaints routed separately and unaffected.
What success would mean: A published business case and fit-gap result; if a pilot goes ahead, more assessment decisions, plans and annual-review decisions within the applicable deadlines, fewer overdue advice requests, more complete provision records, families who understand where their case stands and fewer avoidable chasing contacts. A digital system is not evidence that statutory duties are met.
Minimum scope: assessment requests, acknowledgements, advice requests, decisions and document versions; a named case owner, deadlines, outstanding tasks and an auditable history; annual-review meeting records, contributions, actions, decisions and amended plans; agreed provision with the responsible provider, expected start, confirmation of delivery and unresolved issues (the record would track provision, not deliver it); plain-English family status messages, accessible documents and correction requests; concern and complaint references with links to the statutory complaint and appeal routes, which a portal must not replace or delay; role-based access with access and change logging, after parental responsibility, young-person rights and delegated access are resolved; telephone, assisted and paper routes so digital access is not a condition of support; and only aggregate, disclosure-controlled public reporting. Facts Count would hold no child-level records.
Proposed lead: Portsmouth City Council Director of Children's Services (suggested; not agreed), with the SEND service accountable, the council digital and information-governance teams implementing, and schools, parent-carer representatives, young people and health professionals co-designing. Partners: Schools and academy trusts, Portsmouth Parent Voice and young people's groups, NHS Hampshire and Isle of Wight Integrated Care Board and children's health providers, Council finance, procurement, digital and information-governance teams.
Powers: The council has the legal duty to assess and issue EHC plans and to run the statutory complaint and appeal routes. It chooses its own case-management software. It cannot direct academies or NHS providers: schools and health bodies would take part by agreement. Information-governance rules govern what each role may see.
Options
- Current approach: Keep current systems and processes. Continue with the present case system and the Local SEND Reform Plan. No new cost, but the family-facing visibility gap and audit-evidence gap remain.
- Proposed response: Improve or configure existing council software and processes. Preferred first option if it can meet the minimum scope: fit-gap review of what the present platform and its available modules can do, plus process changes. Lowest duplication risk.
- Alternative: Procure an established EHC workflow product. After a fit-gap and integration review. May give faster, proven family and school access, but needs migration, interfaces, permissions and a second source of truth to be managed.
- Alternative: Bespoke build. Only if the first two options fail a documented requirement. Highest cost and delivery risk; excluded from the planning allowance.
The costs depend on facts not yet published: which software the council already holds and which modules it licenses, interface requirements, migration effort and staff capacity. A new system may improve visibility but can divert staff from casework and create duplicate records, so one authoritative case record must be kept and migration, interfaces, permissions and staff workload tested before any expansion.
Delivery plan
Proposed sequence. A suggested sequence, not promised deadlines. No dates have been proposed or agreed.| Stage | Task | Proposed lead | Dependencies and decisions | Output |
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| Start soon | Discover existing capability: confirm which case-management software and modules the council already uses and what it can do for families and schools | SEND service with council digital team (proposed) | — | Short capability and baseline note, including current deadline performance |
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| Start soon | Commission a short fit-gap and business-case exercise and obtain costs for improving the existing system against procuring an established hub | Director of Children's Services with procurement and finance (proposed) | Decision: Decision whether to proceed to a pilot | Costed options paper replacing the planning allowance with quotations |
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| Build next | Pilot assessment and annual-review workflows with a small mix of schools and consenting families | SEND service with schools and Parent Voice (proposed) | Depends on: Parental responsibility, young-person rights and delegated-access rules settled | Pilot with access, accessibility, workload and data-quality checks |
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| Build next | Add assisted telephone and paper routes and a correction-request process | SEND service (proposed) | — | Published non-digital routes with equal standing |
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| Longer term | Expand only after the pilot checks are passed, and publish the business case and an evaluation | Director of Children's Services (proposed) | — | Published evaluation and a continue, change or stop decision |
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A first practical step: Ask the council to commission a short fit-gap and business-case exercise, and first to check what its existing system and any current delivery commitment already cover, so that Facts Count additions are not mistaken for official programme work.
Costs and funding
- One-off costs
- Planning allowance £216,000 one-off (£180,000 plus 20% contingency). Illustrative Facts Count planning allowance in 2026 pounds. Not a quotation, market evidence, an allocation or a council commitment. No named organisation has agreed to lead, fund or deliver this proposal.
- Recurring costs
- Planning allowance £114,000 a year (£95,000 plus 20% contingency). First-year allowance £330,000 assuming a full year of recurring costs. Assumes an established configurable product; excludes a bespoke platform, major remediation of historic case files and extra assessment or provision capacity.
- Capital or revenue
- To be classified through council finance; not all implementation spend can be assumed to be capital. Licence, support and administration are revenue.
- Funding status
- No funding identified or committed. This is an estimate for planning only. The council could be asked to test existing transformation budgets, procurement routes and partnership contributions. An education grant cannot be assumed to fund all of it, and no savings are claimed before they are measured.
- Affordability
- Not assessed. The council's special-needs grant reserve is already committed to the 2026/27 shortfall (see the school support plan), so any cost needs an identified source before commissioning. Combined with the EBSA pilot the year-one allowance is about £800,000.
- Costing still needed
- Quotations for improving the existing system against procuring an established EHC workflow product; existing licence entitlements; VAT; interface and migration scope; staff capacity. Remove overlap where licence, hosting and support are bundled.
Illustrative Facts Count planning allowance in 2026 pounds. Not a quotation, market evidence, an allocation or a council commitment. No named organisation has agreed to lead, fund or deliver this proposal.
One-off planning allowance (GBP, 2026 prices)| Assumption | Amount |
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| Discovery, family and school co-design and assurance | £40,000 |
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| Product configuration and workflows | £55,000 |
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| Migration, cleansing and validation | £35,000 |
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| Interfaces and access setup | £30,000 |
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| Training and rollout | £20,000 |
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| Subtotal | £180,000 |
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| 20% contingency | £36,000 |
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| Planning allowance | £216,000 |
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Annual recurring planning allowance (GBP, 2026 prices)| Assumption | Amount |
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| Licence allowance | £45,000 |
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| 0.5 FTE administration and support (assumed loaded cost) | £35,000 |
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| Hosting, security and accessibility maintenance allowance | £15,000 |
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| Subtotal | £95,000 |
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| 20% contingency | £19,000 |
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| Planning allowance | £114,000 |
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- One-off planning allowance: £216,000
- Recurring planning allowance a year: £114,000
- First-year allowance (full year of recurring costs): £330,000
- Combined with the EBSA support hub pilot, year one: about £800,000; each later year if the same pilot continued: about £584,000. Linked proposal: ebsa-support-hub. No funding has been secured and no offsetting savings are assumed.
Benefits, risks and trade-offs
Possible benefits: Families could see where a case stands and what is due next. Schools and professionals could work from one record. The council could evidence deadlines and provision. Savings are not claimed before they are measured.
Risks:
- A new platform can divert staff from casework and create duplicate records.
- Access for the wrong person, or for a young person whose rights are unresolved, could harm a child or family.
- Digital access could become a condition of support, which is why telephone, assisted and paper routes are part of the scope.
- Recording provision is not delivering it: a visible gap in provision is not closed by a portal.
- Costs are planning assumptions and could be very different once quotations arrive.
- Any portal must not replace or delay the statutory complaint and appeal routes.
Who could gain or lose: Families who find online systems hard, who do not read English easily or who are less able to challenge decisions could gain most from plain-English status and assisted routes, or lose most if digital becomes the only route. Schools with fewer administrators could carry a heavier load.
Capacity: Depends on SEND case officers and administrators, council digital and information-governance teams and school staff time, at a time when the high needs budget is already short. Staff capacity must be tested in the pilot.
How to judge progress
Proposed measures. Gaps show where no baseline or reporting arrangement exists yet.| Measure | Definition | Starting point | Source and area | How often · who reports |
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| Assessment decisions and plans issued within applicable deadlines | Share of decisions and new plans within the statutory time limits, with denominator, period and coverage | 42.9% of new plans within 20 weeks in 2025 (published); decision timeliness not published | dfe-ehc-timeliness · Portsmouth local authority | Quarterly (proposed) · Council (proposed); Department for Education annually |
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| Overdue advice requests and overdue annual-review decisions | Count and share past their due date at period end | No published baseline Gap: No baseline was found; it would be set before any pilot. | None found · Portsmouth | Quarterly (proposed) · Council (proposed) |
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| Completeness of provision records | Share of agreed provision with a named provider, expected start and confirmation of delivery | No published baseline Gap: No baseline was found. | None found · Portsmouth | Quarterly (proposed) · Council (proposed) |
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| Family understanding of case status, avoidable chasing contacts, staff time, complaint resolution and access incidents | To be designed with Portsmouth Parent Voice; aggregate and disclosure-controlled | No current baseline found Gap: No regular published measure was found. | None found · Portsmouth | Annual (proposed) · Not agreed |
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Reassess when: The fit-gap result is published, the refreshed SEND strategy is published (planned for January 2027), or the council announces its own digital or case-management change for SEND.
Where things stand
What is known:
- Hampshire County Council runs an EHC Hub for families, professionals and settings; its supplier and cost are not stated on the page read.
- The Local SEND Reform Plan (final 2026) describes an Inclusion Hub and Experts at Hand early-support offer, Parent Hubs and a Support Hub being designed through Family Help. This is an advice and support offer, not a family-facing record of an EHC case.
- No Portsmouth online EHC hub, portal or caseworker commitment was found in the Reform Plan, the SEND and alternative provision strategy page or the SEND landing page on 11 November 2026. That is not evidence that no software or service exists.
What is not known:
- Which case-management software and modules the council already holds and could configure.
- Whether the council has any current internal plan for family-facing case access.
- Quotations, licence entitlements and migration scope.
Decisions needed:
- Whether to commission a short fit-gap and business-case exercise.
- Whether improving existing software, procuring a product or neither best meets the minimum scope.
- Who would hold parental-responsibility and young-person access rules.
Existing work:
- Local SEND Reform Plan (final 2026): Inclusion Hub and Experts at Hand, Parent Hubs, developing Support Hub (official programme; separate from this proposal): Approved plan; an advice and early-support offer, with no EHC portal or case-record commitment found (as of 2026-11-11).
- Portsmouth SEND and alternative provision strategy 2024 to 2029: In force; refresh planned for January 2027; page does not mention a digital portal (as of 2026-11-11).
UK Facts context: Special educational needs in England (National picture; national reform is set by government, local delivery by the council and partners.) · Attendance and missing education (National absence trends; schools and the council act locally.)
Next review: When the fit-gap result is published, or when the refreshed SEND strategy is published (planned January 2027), whichever comes first. Evidence last checked 2026-11-11.
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