More than £2,000 has been paid to a parent by Bracknell Forest Council after delays and failings caused his daughter to miss more than a year of school.

The payout was ordered by the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman, which also said the council had to apologise.

The ombudsman said the local authority had caused “distress and frustration” to the parent – and had “fundamentally misunderstood its legal duties” to provide the child with full-time education.

The parent – named Mr X by the ombudsman – removed his child, Y, from a special educational needs school in January 2022.

Bracknell Forest Council placed his child in the school a year earlier, in January 2021. But after the school announced it would move to a new premises, Mr X complained that it didn’t meet Y’s needs, and decided not to send her back in January 2022.

He said that “the lack of time out space, equipment, the noise of the new building and there was no transition” had “impacted Y’s ability to engage with school,” according to the ombudsman.

Mr X complained to the council about the school in January 2022. He also complained that the council had spent too long to send him its plans to provide Y with education, health and care after assessments in 2020 and 2021.

The school said it would provide Y with occupational therapy and speech and language therapy, and send her worksheets while she was out of school. But this stopped in August 2022, and Mr X said he was told therapists weren’t authorised to continue the next academic year.

Meanwhile, Mr X said he had found a place for Y at a new school. But the council delayed its decison, then refused his request saying the school had recently had a critical Ofsted report.

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The council apologised for the delays in November, after Mr X first complained to the ombudsman. It said a high turnover of staff had made communication difficult, and offered a payment of £1,200.

But Bracknell Forest Council also said it had been Mr X’s choice to take Y out of education. Yet the ombudsman ruled that, as the council took no action to send Y back to the school, it accepted Mr X’s reasons for taking her out. It said it was the council’s responsibility to find her a new one.

It ordered the council to pay Mr X £900 on top of the £1,200 it had already offered.

The ruling comes after an Ofsted report last year found “significant concerns” about Bracknell Forest Council’s special educational needs provision. The council’s executive committee last month agreed to spend £350,000 on special educational needs staff.