After I made my appeal, my LA agreed to make the changes I was asking for in sections B and F. What do I need to do?

This depends on when the LA agreed to make the changes you are asking for.

Within 30 working days of the appeal being sent to it, the LA is required to provide a response to the grounds of appeal.

Agreeing to your changes before the response deadline

If your LA decides not to oppose the appeal before it submits a response, it must tell the SEND Tribunal. Check with your LA that it has done this.

Once the LA has told the SEND Tribunal, the appeal is to be treated as if it was determined in your favour. This means the SEND Tribunal is not required to make an order.

Your LA must issue the amended EHC plan within five weeks of the notification by the LA to the SEND Tribunal that it is not opposing the appeal. This deadline is set out in The SEND Regulations 2014, regulation 45. If your LA does not comply with this deadline, this is equivalent to being in breach of an order of the SEND Tribunal. We have a template letter that you can use if this happens.

You should not ask the SEND Tribunal to withdraw your contents appeal in this situation unless the parties have negotiated an agreed format for the amended EHC plan and the LA has issued an amended final EHC plan in the agreed form. Once you receive this and have checked it to make sure it contains everything you were expecting, then you can inform the SEND Tribunal that you want to withdraw your appeal.

Your other option is to ask the SEND Tribunal to order the LA to change the EHC plan in the way the parties have agreed within a set time frame, by making a consent order (please see below and on our pages for more information on consent orders)

Agreeing to your changes after the response deadline

Once the response has been submitted, the parties will need the SEND Tribunal’s permission to end the appeal process.

Both parties should agree what actions will be taken and request a consent order from the SEND Tribunal using the consent order proforma (SEND46).

Permission is not guaranteed. The SEND Tribunal may refuse to allow the appeal to be ended, for example if the proposal by the parties fails to deal with all the issues in dispute, or it is very close to the hearing.

In an appeal about the contents of an EHC plan and/or the name of the school in the EHC plan, if you decided not to pursue all of the changes that you originally wanted, or have accepted a different school or institution can be named, when requesting the consent order you should make clear you are happy with the outcome. If all the changes you were looking for have been agreed by your LA, you should make this clear.

The consent order proforma does not refer to deadlines for your LA to take the agreed action. However, your LA must proceed as if the matter had been heard and determined in your favour, applying the deadlines set out in regulation 44 of The SEND Regulations 2014. If different deadlines have been agreed, they should be clearly defined and added to the form. IPSEA has a template letter that can be used if the LA fails to comply.

The final agreed proposed consent order proforma will need to be signed by both parties then submitted to the SEND Tribunal explaining that the parties have reached agreement and request a consent order concluding the appeal on those terms.

In an appeal involving the contents of an EHC plan, the final version of the working document will need to be sent with the request for a consent order. If you have decided not to pursue some of your proposed amendments then these should be removed or returned to the original text in this final version. All agreed amendments should be underlined as per the working document key.