A teenager has missed almost a year of education which has landed Surrey County Council (SCC) with an £8,100 fine.

A 19-year-old with special educational needs should have been issued an Education, Heath and Care Plan (EHCP) in December 2022

However, it took a year to create a draft, and even that failed to name a school after the two colleges put forward by the council declined to offer him a place.

His mother complained to SCC in January, but it took until February for her to hear back. With the local authority blaming the “national shortage of educational psychologists” for the delay.

Surrey agreed to pay the family an initial £900 to reflect the distress and uncertainty caused by its delay and offered further £500 to reflect the impact it had.

The Local Government Ombudsman, who heard the complaint, raised the latter amount to £7,200 for a total of £8,100.

The watchdog wrote: “We have dealt with a number of Surrey cases about the same issue…complained about.

“The council told us it has a backlog of around 1,000 EHCP needs assessments awaiting an educational psychologist assessment. It explained how its Educational Psychology Service had seen a 64 per cent increase in referrals since 2020 for EHCPs.

“It noted a national shortage of qualified educational psychologist’s and other key professionals who provide advice as part of the needs assessment process. The core staffing was at 50 per cent.”

The process of assessing the teenager’s education, health and care needs still should have been carried out in a timely manner, the Ombudsman wrote.

A final plan should have been available within 20 weeks of November 8, 2022 – by April 11 2023. It wasn’t available until December 20, 2023, a delay of eight and a half months.

It caused avoidable distress and uncertainty about the special educational provision he was entitled to, they said.

There was also a referral to the educational psychologist service on December 14, 2022 and their advice should have been available at the start of February 2023. It wasn’t available until September 8.

The delay of seven months was a “service failure” and as a consequence, caused the teenager to “miss out on almost a year of education”, the Ombudsman said.

Cllr Clare Curran apologised and said the council was working hard to improve the service.

She said: “This progress includes our ECHP timeliness which has improved significantly as a result of our recovery plan – the proportion of plans being issued on time has been above the national average (50.3 per cent) since May 24, and has been over 60 per cent from June to September.

“We have also caught up on the backlog of Education, Health and Care needs assessments by using external educational psychologists to provide statutory advice for overdue assessments and increasing our SEND service capacity.

“Teams have worked tirelessly to do this, and we are retaining this extra staffing to ensure we have the right capacity to complete the work moving forward.”