Tribunal appeal timetable.

[Icimoi]

I've heard the tribunal is planning to bring a new appeal timetable in so that most appeals are finished within 7 weeks. Not sure what I think about that: it's obviously good to get through the process quickly, but it'll make it an awful rush getting experts' reports etc. What do other people think?

I had heard it as well - I think that as parents would mean we would have to get our evidence ready before you submit the appeal as 7 weeks very short but then I also think anything to cut down the lengthy process and game playing the LA can currently do has to be better

Whilst it will be a rush to get indie reports, this can only be good news for children without provision.

Because of the current lengthy appeal time, for my 2 appeals (refusal to assess, followed by appeal against statement's contents), my DS was without any form of education for over a year. For the 2nd appeal - despite immediately lodging an appeal and providing all my evidence a month before it was due - because the LA only did things on the various deadlines, it took exactly 7 months from the date of the final Statement until the date of the Tribunal-enforced new final statement. That is way too long for a child totally out of education.

Having new shortened timescales will help our DC. Although, being a cynic, is this to get as many Statement appeals through Tribunals as possible, before everything changes in September?

no towie - I think this is for the new EHCP appeals that happen in the future rather than the current statements

I expect the onus will be on parents to already their reports in when they submit their appeal. Hopefully the 8 weeks given to lodge an appeal won't be shortened, too, to facilitate this. I used this time to get a private report to fill a gap that I felt strongly about as being relevant and that was brought up by several parties at AR. I got that report in October, though, so had the LA not conceded, I would have needed to get an update to submit by the middle of next month so that it couldn't be argued that the report was old by the May hearing date.

Ah! Makes sense tho - to have a much shortened timeline so children get provision quicker.

And yes, the hearing date was 11.5 months after the AR that didn't get the statement amended, so it's a good thing that the timelines are being tightened. So long as that is being achieved by increasing resources, rather than reducing access to the system