Case summary

This case was heard under the old legal framework, but it is still relevant because the principles remain the same.

A child with special educational needs (SEN) had a Statement, now known as an EHC plan.

The Statement referred to speech therapy under part 3 (now Section F of an EHC plan) but in such vague terms that his parent did not have a clear idea of how much help his son was to receive. The Statement was specific, however, about the money that would be spent on provision, £6,000 a year (detailed as Band 3).

The speech therapist’s advice recommended 3 hours a week, but the child received one hour per week. 3 hours of speech therapy a week cost more than £6,000.

The parent thought the reason his son was not receiving the therapy he needed was that the figure of £6,000 acted as a ceiling on the spending that could be made on his son’s special educational provision.

He therefore sought judicial review in order to challenge the legality of the local authority’s (LA’s) banding policy, in that it seemed to prevent the LA providing the provision called for by the child’s SEN.

The appeal failed, but the judge said:

• There was no need to specify a figure in the Statement.
• If the Statement simply said ‘£6,000 is allocated to pay for all of the child’s needs’ this would have been unlawful, but it did not.
• However, the Statement was not specific enough and a new Statement, making clear what special educational provision the child was entitled to, needed to be issued.

What does this mean?

This case establishes that reference to bands, cash figures or positions on a matrix are allowed, but on their own are not enough to satisfy the law’s requirement to specify provision in part 3 of a Statement.

This remains relevant to EHC plans as the requirement to specify needs and provision also appears in the Children and Families Act 2014, at section 37(2).

No case report is available online.

For more information, see our sections on what an EHC plan should contain, and on judicial review.