It wouldn't be one appeal. You need to appeal to make them assess. Then you need to appeal to make them issue. Then you need to appeal against the chocolate teapot they did in fact issue.
I've had chemo. And I honestly assure you that I would rather go through another year of chemo than a single appeal; they are that stressful. Yet here I am, in my fourth. In six years. And that's not even rare. The lawbreaking by the very people paid to support these kids is on an industrial scale. It is institutionalised and the norm.
They do not tend to give in in Kent on refusals to issue. Do you even know what the criteria is for that - it's not low! And parents can be mislead on it into focusing on the mental health elements - you can't get an EHCP unless there is sufficient in section F, the learning section. But most parents don't know, which is why they can lose at that point even when the entitlement is there without help and advice.
Kent don't even always give in on refusals to assess, and the criteria there is on the floor! I'm presently supporting a parent whose child's attainment is 2 years behind expected levels and where Kent are paying almost £3000 a year to the school from High Needs Block, on top of the school's own £6000, and they are still refusing to assess this child. They will then try to refuse to issue (good luck with that, Kent, with a provision map showing almost £9k spend and no progress, when the threshold for necessary SEP for an EHCP is £6k) and then when they lose that they will issue a chocolate teapot, which we will have to appeal a third time to get an EHCP anyone can actually enforce. Because the mum knows me, I have got an earlier refusal to assess (due to phase transfer) and on the papers, so it's taken 4 months instead of 13. We'll then hold them to the statutory timeline to assess, instead of their current more than a year, via the PAP letter from SOS!SEN, and we will also secure independent reports from brilliant kind people willing to do it at minimal rates because they are diamonds, which the family will fund using the magic DLA money tree. That will be another 3 months. We will then use the expedited route again, as the child is in a phase transfer, to ensure the next appeal takes 4 months (again on the papers only, no hearing, because it's SO bloody obvious what the answer should be) and then after that we will have to do a full hearing, and hope and pray we can get that in by next summer, ready for secondary transfer somewhere that won't break her - and if we don't, break her secondary placement will. We will work like hell and try every possible legal means in order to get this terrifyingly vulnerable child an EHCP within 18 months that's fit for purpose, and that there is any chance at all is solely because I myself have had such brilliantly skilled and dedicated legal help that I know the system. And that massively speeded up timeline may, MAY, mean a little girl in this plight gets an EHCP worth having 15 months after her mum lodged the application. If she didn't pull all those levers, even with appeals it would be 4 years.
The mum who is taking the JR had no chance at all of getting this sorted for her child inside the time she had available, and even outside that time frame, no chance without a lot of expensive reports and legal help unless and until she'd sent her child in, watched them be destroyed, and then gone, "okay, she's now got a smorgasbord of diagnosed mental health issues, can I have an EHCP?" I mean, they'd still have said no, but it would have been an easier win at Tribunal.
There is a huge, huge SEN crisis. SEN was where the NHS is now ten years ago. Imagine where the NHS will be in ten years, if there is a sudden determination to cut budgets at all costs? That's what has happened.
What people don't grasp is that without expensive reports - and a single really good medico-legal report is often in the thousands - you can only win decent provision IF YOUR CHILD IS ALREADY HARMED. So many have to home educate because they can't afford reports, and can't afford private, but can't send kids in to state secondaries that will break them, either.
So much hysteria about VAT on school fees, and almost no interest at all in what is happening to the families and children at the sharp end of all of this. 42% of SEN parents consider suicide. 92% of neurodivergent kids suffer extreme school distress, as opposed to 6% in the general population. The studies - robust, peer reviewed - are there. Why do you all care so much about making life harder for some privileged people (when by definition the most privileged of that cohort will barely notice) and not care at all about the SEN crisis? One in ten kids are neurodivergent. 15% of the school age kids are disabled in some way. That's twice those in private schools! Where are the threads on that on Mumsnet, lasting days and attracting such fierce interest?
EHCPs take years, they take extraordinary levels of dedication, and then the LAs largely ignore them, anyway. Take a look at the LGO decisions if you don't believe me. Imagine if YOU had to engage in constant litigation, just to ensure your kids had the education to which they were always entitled in the first place, and then you see people wangsting on endlessly about something that when it boils down to it, just means "I resent people being able to buy their kids privilege." That's human. I get it. But how about a little recognition on your own privilege, if you don't have to fight to try to get your kids any education at all?
Parents opting out of the battle to secure an EHCP and begging or borrowing to fund private fees via family contributions or loans or remortage are sane, not privileged. Nobody has the right to declare themselves progressive and concerned about social justice and the vulnerable when they do not give a crap about the most vulnerable group of all.
If you don't care because you aren't affected, I get that. I do. The world is full of awful things and we all have to pick our focus. But for the love of God, stop posting lies about how parents can get an EHCP, or that they get EHCPs if they are needed, or that EHCPs are simple to even frigging enforce - I know a family told by their LA that it doesn't matter what the Tribunal decide because the LA won't do it anyway. Literally saying they will commit contempt of court, because the only remedy is Judicial Review, and there's no punishment or compensation so the LAs still gain even if the parent does that (and most don't, and give up). I have personally had to start JR proceedings because the LA chose to ignore our child's EHCP and just offered some maths and English and I am not alone.
I don't expect everyone to care. I do expect people not to invent a functional system that does not exist, and then demand that people rely on that fantasy.