Judicial review consultation

[Veritate]

In typical underhand mode, the government sneaked out a consultation document on reforming judicial review just before Christmas - consult.justice.gov.uk/digital-communications/judicial-review-reform .

The relevance of this to us is that JR is the legal action you use if you need to enforce your child's right to what is in his statement, or for things like delay by the LA in going through the statement process, failure to arrange full time education, and school transport disputes. In most cases the action is brought in the child's name so legal aid is available.

Although much of it has little to do with us, there is one proposal which has potentially quite dire consequences. Normally there is a three month time limit for starting an application, but under the current law, when there is an ongoing breach (like failure to do what is in the statement) then the time limit restarts every day that the breach continues. The proposal is to abolish that rule. Therefore, if your child isn't getting what is in his statement and you don't start a JR claim within three months of when you first find out about it or should find out about it, tough - he doesn't get it.

This is particularly dire in SN and disability cases, because parents often simply don't know that they can use JR, or they believe school and LA promises that things are about to be sorted out. If a statement is finalised at the end of June and the parent knows the school hasn't, say, organised speech therapy, she may well decide that that's OK because it's near the end of term. Then at the beginning of the autumn term she may not be able to clarify what is happening for the first two or three weeks or may be misled by school assurances. She therefore loses 3 weeks at the end of the summer term, 6 weeks during the holiday, and 3 weeks in September, and will be very lucky indeed if she wakes up in time to start off a JR. Although presumably it would still be possible to go to the ombudsman, that's really a total gamble.

I'd therefore suggest that people enter responses to the consultation - time limit is 24th January. You don't have to plough through the consultation form, you can just send a letter.

Thanks for the heads-up. I agree, that's a typical example of a very badly thought-through proposal which can only harm our children, and it needs to be opposed.

This really worries me. When DS1 was in a mainstream school he went for well over a term without the speech therapy in his statement before I found out, and then I stupidly believed the school for several weeks more when they told me it was being sorted. However, when I got a solicitor to write threatening judicial review it all got sorted out very quickly. If these proposals are put into law, someone in my situation would presumably be unable to do anything about the lack of SLT and DS would never have had any.

Also, a friend of mine tried complaining to the Ombudsman and was told they think it's OK for schools and councils to take 3 months to produce what is in the statement. Has anyone else come across that? If the Ombudsman thinks the LA is allowed to take 3 months to sort things out but you have to bring court proceedings within 3 months the whole situation becomes impossible.

As I read this it is referring specifically to Planning and Purchasing decisions only. Not the general power to apply for JR in education cases which remains at 3 months. Para 60 refers.

Paragraph 60 does relate solely to planning and procurement decisions, but what we are looking at here are paragraphs 62 to 65 which refer specifically to the current rule about ongoing failure by a public authority - under which in effect the starting point for bringing proceedings is continuously moved - and they say that it is proposed to abolish that, so that every case has to be brought within three months of the beginning of the breach. In a case like nennypops', that would indeed mean that she would be prevented from enforcing her child's right to therapy.

No I accept your point in full.

It may be useful to raise this specifically with IPSEA who do pay attention to oversight in this area.

Just bumping this as the deadline is approaching and this could be so detrimental to our children.