What is the LA's duty to secure the provision in Section F?

The duty, in one line

The local authority must secure every piece of special educational provision specified in Section F of an EHC plan. It is an absolute, non-delegable duty, not 'best endeavours', and a lack of money is no defence. The wording in the Children and Families Act 2014 is bare: the authority must secure the specified provision (s.42(2)). There is no qualifier on the verb, so the courts read it as an unqualified statutory obligation rather than a duty to try.

Why ‘we are doing our best’ does not hold

The duty bites from the day the final plan is issued and is owed to that individual child or young person. Day-to-day delivery can sit with a school or college, but legal responsibility cannot be passed on. If the setting cannot recruit the learning support assistant or therapist, has run out of money, or lacks the expertise, the authority has to step in and make the provision itself. Practical or financial difficulty is not a defence, and a school’s failure to deliver does not discharge the authority’s duty. In R (L) v Hampshire County Council [2024] the High Court reaffirmed exactly this and refused to settle for a declaration that the authority was in breach: it made a mandatory order requiring the council to put all the Section F provision in place within five weeks.

The one statutory release

The single exception sits in the Act itself (s.42(5)): the duty does not apply where the parent or the young person has made suitable alternative arrangements. It is a narrow door. A parent privately funding provision the authority should be securing does not automatically count, and an authority cannot simply assume the exception applies to step back from its own duty. If you intend to rely on s.42(5), evidence that the arrangements are genuinely suitable and genuinely the family’s own choice.

What this means for casework

• Treat Section F as a delivery obligation, not a planning aspiration: every item must be actually in place from the date the final plan issues.
• Where a setting cannot deliver, the question is not whether the authority can afford to step in, but how it will. Breach is enforceable by mandatory order, not just a declaration.
• The February 2026 Schools White Paper proposes Individual Support Plans and narrowing EHC plans toward the most complex needs over the longer term, but no changes take effect before September 2030 and current plan holders are protected. The s.42 duty as set out here is the law today and for the foreseeable future.

For the wider context, see what Section F of an EHCP covers and the authority’s duty to maintain the plan.

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