Special Educational Needs: Appeals
(asked on 5th March 2025) - View Source
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many parents or young people have taken Norfolk City Council to appeal at a tribunal against an Education, Care and Health Plan decision in each of the last five years; and what (a) number and (b) proportion of those appeals were (i) determined in favour of the appellants, (ii) determined in favour of the local authority, (iii) withdrawn, (iv) conceded before the hearing and (v) still awaiting a hearing.
Information about appeal outcomes to SEND is published at: Tribunals statistics quarterly: July to September 2024 - GOV.UK.
Appeal outcomes are not broken down by Local Authority in the routinely published data as requested in this PQ. These data are provided for academic years September to August as follows:
Norfolk City(1) Council | 2019-20 | 2020-21 | 2021-22 | 2022-23 | 2023-24 |
(i) Number and proportion of those appeals determined in favour of the appellants | 68 76% | 161 67% | 165 67% | 219 70% | 281 56% |
(ii) Number and proportion of those appeals determined in favour of the local authority(2) | 1 1% | 3 1% | 4 2% | 8 3% | 5 1% |
(iii) Number and proportion of withdrawn appeals | 12 13% | 50 21% | 52 21% | 35 11% | 54 11% |
(iv) Number and proportion of appeals conceded before the hearing | 6 7% | 22 9% | 22 9% | 49 16% | 48 10% |
(v) Number and proportion of appeals still awaiting a hearing | 0 0% | 0 0% | 0 0% | 0 0% | 2 1% |
Total number of appeals to the tribunal(3) | 89 | 241 | 246 | 315 | 502 |
1. Data for Norfolk is held locally as Norfolk County Council.
2. (ii) is the total of cases where the appellant wins the majority of the appeal (i.e. the appellant may be successful in 2 out of the 3 sections they appeal against).
3. In addition to the categories requested appeals can be struck out. This is included in the total number of appeals.
The information provided has been extracted from local management information.