Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, for each of the last seven years, how many SEND7 request for change applications have been submitted to the SEND tribunal; how many of these applications have resulted in a new, sooner appeal date; and what was the average reduction in the waiting time for an appeal to be heard where a SEND7 request was successful.

Data on the average waiting time between appeal lodgement and first hearing, and between appeal lodgement and final disposal, for Special Educational Needs and Disability (SEND) appeals is not routinely recorded by the Tribunal. Consequently, the average waiting time for a SEND appeal to be heard from receipt of the appeal, including a yearly breakdown for the period 2019 to 2025, could only be obtained through the manual review of individual case records. This information could therefore only be provided at disproportionate cost.

HMCTS does not routinely record the number of requests made under Rule 7 of the Tribunal’s procedure rules. This information is therefore not held.