How do we support a pupil whose EHCP names provision we don't offer?

Deliver everything you can now, use your best endeavours on the named provision, and tell the local authority in writing of anything you cannot fund — securing Section F provision is the LA's absolute duty, not yours.

Start by delivering what you can, and using best endeavours

Section F is the part of the plan that lists the special educational provision the child must receive. As a mainstream setting you are under a best-endeavours duty: section 66 of the Children and Families Act 2014 says you must do everything you reasonably can to secure the provision a pupil's needs call for. So put in place every element you can from your own staff, resources and budget first, and make a genuine attempt at the rest — for example arranging timetabling for a named programme, or releasing a teaching assistant towards a ratio you can partly meet. Being named in the placement section of the plan also means you must admit the pupil (section 43); it does not let you decline the place because you feel you cannot meet need.

Document the gap, then tell the council in writing

Where a specified element is genuinely beyond what you can make or fund from your own resources — named therapy hours, a specialist programme, equipment, or a 1:1 ratio your budget will not stretch to — record what you have tried and what remains unmet, then notify the council without delay. The reason to put it in writing quickly is that the duty to secure Section F provision does not sit with you. As IPSEA sets out, where a school has tried but cannot put the provision in place from its own resources, it is the local authority's job to ensure it is made. Leaving the gap unrecorded, or sending the family away to sort it out, is the one response that exposes both the child and the school.

The duty bounces up to the council, not the family

The council's duty under section 42 to secure the provision in Section F is absolute: it is not a best-endeavours duty, and the council cannot discharge it by pointing back at you. The High Court confirmed this in R (L) v Hampshire County Council [2024], where it granted a mandatory order requiring the authority to secure all of a child's provision within five weeks. So once you have flagged the shortfall, the council must arrange and fund it — by commissioning a therapist, releasing top-up funding, or, if the setting truly cannot be made to work, looking at an alternative placement. Your job is to keep delivering what you can and to chase the council, not to absorb a cost the law puts on them.

The this-week step, and what is on the horizon

This is the law as it stands now. The 2026 Schools White Paper and the Education for All Bill propose a new Individual Support Plan duty and narrowing EHC plans to the most complex needs, but the consultation is live, nothing changes before September 2030, and current plan-holders are protected. For now the sections 42, 43 and 66 duties apply unchanged. For the wider picture of the delivery duty, see whether a school has to follow Section F of an EHCP, and for the escalation route what happens if you cannot deliver the provision in a pupil's EHCP.

This page is general information, not clinical or legal advice.