Once a child or young person has an EHC plan, the local authority (LA) must ensure the support set out in the plan is made for them.

Normally, the LA will do this by providing the necessary funding to your child’s school or college, in order for them to deliver the educational support needed, and by arranging any external therapies or other provision that may be specified. However, it is also possible for the LA to consider making a payment to the parent, the young person, or another nominated person so that you can organise the provision yourself. This is called a direct payment. In order for you to request a direct payment, the LA must first identify a personal budget.

Remember, the purpose of a personal budget or direct payment is to allow you to arrange provision that is specified in Section F of the EHC plan yourself. It is not a pot of money for ‘extras’ like home tuition, after-school activities, additional therapies or anything else that is not specified in Section F.

What is a personal budget?

The personal budget is the notional amount of money that would be needed to cover the cost of making the special educational provision specified in the EHC plan. You cannot have a personal budget for education unless you have an EHC plan. Information about the availability of personal budgets must be contained in your LA’s local offer.

Your LA must consider identifying a personal budget for educational provision if you request it when your LA issues a draft EHC plan following an EHC needs assessment or when it is reviewing an EHC plan. It is not legally required to consider identifying a personal budget for educational provision at other times.

Sometimes, your LA can refuse to identify a personal budget. It may do so when the special educational provision is being provided as part of a larger budget (for example, a contract with the NHS to provide all speech and language therapy or occupational therapy) and the LA can’t separate out or ‘disaggregate’ the personal budget for your child from that overall larger budget.

How can I get a direct payment?

If you do request a personal budget from your LA, you can at the same time ask it to identify which elements or parts of the personal budget you could then receive as a direct payment. This is an actual amount of money that you would receive so that you could commission or arrange the provision in the EHC plan yourself.  The direct payment must be enough to cover the cost of arranging the provision.

Your LA can refuse to make a direct payment if it thinks the person receiving the payments would not be capable of managing the money, or if it thinks the money would be used in an inappropriate way. It can also refuse to make a direct payment where this would negatively impact other services provided by the LA, or if it would not be an efficient use of resources.

Where the provision proposed to be replaced by a direct payment takes place in a school or college setting, the consent of the head teacher or principal is required. If they do not consent then the LA will be unable to make a direct payment.

If the LA refuses to identify a personal budget or make a direct payment, you cannot appeal against that decision but you can ask for it to be reviewed.