Please can you tell me how much the council has spent on instructing solicitors/barristers for Special Educational Needs first tier tribunals, upper tribunals and judicial reviews in each year since 2013/14.
Please break down the total by cost per case and please provide a summary of the reason for each case e.g. parent seeking council funds to cover the cost of their child’s education.
If possible, please provide the outcome of each case i.e. the panel/judge upheld the council’s decision, the panel/judge overturned the council’s decision and for each hearing please include whether the parent had legal representation or if they were a litigant in person.
Please also include how many cases were settled before they went to hearing, or where one party cancelled the hearing please state whether this was the local authority or the parent.
We do not hold a central record of this information and therefore, to extract this information, we would have to review every file concerning children with special educational needs. In 2021 there have been more than 100. To use this average, this would require a review of approximately 800 files since 2013. Allowing for 15 minutes per file, we therefore estimate that this would therefore take 200 hours.
This is in excess of the appropriate limit of 18 hours and we are not obliged to provide this information pursuant to s.12 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000.
By way of advice and assistance, we may be able to help with a different request concerning overall legal costs; please feel free to submit a further request for information.