Current number of EHCPs and expenditures
Case reference FOI2026/00055
Received 8 January 2026
Published 28 January 2026
Request
I am writing to request information under the Freedom of Information Act 2000. I am requesting aggregate, anonymised information only; I am not seeking copies of EHCPs or any personal data.
If any part of this request would exceed the appropriate cost limit, please advise how it might be refined.
Please provide the following for each of the last three full financial years (or longest period available):
1. Number of EHCPs with activity-based provision
a) The number of EHCPs maintained by the authority where special educational provision includes any specified activity-based provision, such as provision that is defined in terms of a specific non-standard educational or training activity rather than only generic educational support.
This could include: animal-assisted activities, outdoor/adventure activities, sport-based programmes, arts-based provision, or other named activity-based provision.
If your IT systems use coded categories for types of provision, please base the response on those categories and include the code list.
2. Expenditure on activity-based provision
a) The total gross expenditure incurred by the authority in funding the activity-based provision described above.
If this information is held in financial systems rather than linked directly to plans, please provide totals from those financial categories which best correspond to the above provision.
3. Equine-specific provision
For equine-related provision (for example, “equine therapy”, “equine-assisted learning”, "riding therapy", or similar horse-riding terms), please provide:
a) The number of EHCPs where such equine-related activity is specified, by year.
b) The total gross expenditure on this equine-related provision in each year.
Response
I am writing to request information under the Freedom of Information Act 2000. I am requesting aggregate, anonymised information only; I am not seeking copies of EHCPs or any personal data.
If any part of this request would exceed the appropriate cost limit, please advise how it might be refined.
Please provide the following for each of the last three full financial years (or longest period available):
1. Number of EHCPs with activity-based provision
a) The number of EHCPs maintained by the authority where special educational provision includes any specified activity-based provision, such as provision that is defined in terms of a specific non-standard educational or training activity rather than only generic educational support.
This could include: animal-assisted activities, outdoor/adventure activities, sport-based programmes, arts-based provision, or other named activity-based provision.
If your IT systems use coded categories for types of provision, please base the response on those categories and include the code list.
2. Expenditure on activity-based provision
a) The total gross expenditure incurred by the authority in funding the activity-based provision described above.
If this information is held in financial systems rather than linked directly to plans, please provide totals from those financial categories which best correspond to the above provision.
3. Equine-specific provision
For equine-related provision (for example, “equine therapy”, “equine-assisted learning”, "riding therapy", or similar horse-riding terms), please provide:
a) The number of EHCPs where such equine-related activity is specified, by year.
b) The total gross expenditure on this equine-related provision in each year.
Answer: This information is not held in a form that would enable it to be located, retrieved and extracted within the Appropriate Time Limit which equates to 18 hours as defined by the Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limits and Fees) Regulations 2004.
Our electronic reporting systems are unable to run a report for this information. This is because the local authority will record which school a child attends, or if a child does not attend a school, however we don’t record on our case management system whether the child has an activity-based provision specified in their EHCP.
To ascertain the data requested, officers would need to manually check individual EHCPs for this information. An initial search has shown that over 2,000 EHCPs would need to be checked for this information, and it is estimated that it would take 10 minutes to check each plan. Once the details had been identified this would need to be noted and once all files had been checked in this way, the total figures requested could be calculated.
This would at a conservative estimate take at least 333 hours to complete. Where the Limit is exceeded Public Authorities are not obliged to supply the information requested by virtue of S12 of the Act. Please take this letter as a refusal notice under S17 of the Act.
Please note, Herefordshire Council will not hold the information for the funding amounts for any activity-based provision as the school receives a single payment from which they might pay for any activity-based provision specified in EHCP.
Documents
This is Herefordshire Council's response to a freedom of information (FOI) or environmental information regulations (EIR) request.
You can browse our other responses or make a new FOI request.