What is driving the rising cost of EHCPs?

The two drivers, in one line

Two things drive it: the number of EHC plans keeps rising (638,700 in England by January 2025, up 10.8% in a year), and councils increasingly buy high-cost independent special school places at about £61,500 a pupil. The first is a volume problem; the second is a unit-cost problem concentrated in a small share of placements. Both compound, and both sit on top of the statutory duty to deliver what a plan names, so neither is a matter of discretionary spend.

Driver one: more plans

Plan numbers are the larger part of the picture. There were 638,745 children and young people with an EHC plan in England as of January 2025, a 10.8% rise on January 2024 (DfE). The growth is broad, not one condition: autistic spectrum disorder is the most common primary need at 31.5% of plans, followed by speech, language and communication needs (21.3%) and social, emotional and mental health (20.7%). Rising autism, ADHD, SEMH and speech-and-language identification is doing most of the work here, which is why demand is hard to forecast from any single trend line.

Driver two: high-cost independent placements

Within unit cost, one line item moves the budget out of proportion to its size. Spending on independent special school fees is up more than £1bn (about 138%) since 2015, reaching at least £1.8bn in 2024 and covering nearly 30,000 EHCP pupils, around 5% of plans (IFS). Those places cost roughly double a state special school place:

• Independent / non-maintained special school place: about £61,500 a year per pupil
• State special school place: about £24,000 a year per pupil
• Share of plans involved: roughly 5% of EHCP pupils, taking a disproportionate share of the spending rise

So a small, fast-growing cohort at twice the per-place cost explains why spend outpaces plan numbers. Total high-needs spending in English schools rose from about £7.5bn in 2016 to about £12bn in 2025, a real-terms rise of around two-thirds (IFS).

The qualifier most summaries miss

The cost is statutory, not optional. EHC plans are issued under Part 3 of the Children and Families Act 2014, and councils must secure the provision and placement a plan names (s.42), including an independent placement where one is named. The gap is forecast to widen: the OBR expects high-needs spending to rise from £11.8bn (2023–24) to over £15bn (2028–29), with an implied gap of roughly £6bn between funding and spend by 2028–29 and DSG deficits heading toward around £8bn absent intervention (IFS). Read every figure here as a moving target: the picture is mid-reform. The February 2026 Schools White Paper Every Child Achieving and Thriving and the Education for All Bill propose a new Individual Support Plan duty and would narrow EHC plans to the most complex needs, with no changes before September 2030 and current holders protected. A 12-week consultation is live. Separately, the government will absorb 90% of eligible DSG deficits recognised at 31 March 2026, conditional on an approved local reform plan, and the statutory override runs to March 2028.

• See also how LAs forecast high-needs demand, how to reduce independent placement costs, and the average cost of an independent special school place.

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