Can an EHCP be easily transferred?

[smooch]

Anyone have experience of transferring an EHCP between local authorities?

I'm asking on behalf of a friend, so apologies if I'm not using the correct terminology. My friend has two autistic children. She and her partner have split up and ideally she would move to another (cheaper) area. However she believes she is restricted to staying where she is due to the educational awards for her children (one is in a mainstream school, the other in a special needs school). Is this a complete blocker, or is there a way? Interested to hear people's experience of this. Thanks in advance.

When people move to another area, the original LA has to send the file to the new one, which has to maintain the EHCP but can review it. It's likely that they will have to issue a new EHCP anyway to fit their template. The likelihood is that the new LA will follow what the old one has done, simply because they don't really have the staff to do full assessments, but it obviously can't be guaranteed.

Thanks for the information, GnotherGnu

Ehcp will remain in old county format until annual review where it will be transferred over to receiving county format. Receiving county cannot refuse to accept it, or change content when changing it over to their format. (It is pretty much a copy and paste exercise), but they generally leave it as it is and the new school does all the hard work at the annual review.

Once your friend has an address in the new county they can phone that LA Sen team and make them aware of her dcs, she should contact the county she is leaving, as they need to pass the information over to the new county, they should do this 2 weeks prior to the move.