PD and AD v Stockton-on-Tees Borough Council (SEN): [2019] UKUT 57 (AAC)
Upper Tribunal Administrative Appeals Chamber decision by Judge Lane on 14 February 2019.
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Judicial Summary
(i) Parents’ choice of school named in EHCP subject to parents’ paying cost of transport, with LA’s preferred school named as default. Appellants’ submitted that nature and cost of journey to and from LA’s named school made it unsuitable for their child. This was not addressed by the Tribunal. However, it emerged at the UT hearing that the the appellants and their representatives did not represent the manner in which their case unfolded before the F-tT fairly. (ii) Tribunal’s made no error of law in rejecting parents’ submission that LA’s named school was unsuitable because it could not provide child with some mainstream integration. The arguments presented to the F-tT could not have succeeded on any view. (iii) F-tT’s failure to deal with section 9 of the Education Act 1996 after dealing with section 39(3) of the Children and Families Act Act 2014 castigated, but since the F-tT happened, probably accidentally, to carry out the balancing exercise that would have been required had it realised the necessity to do so, the error was immaterial. Where necessary, facts found and decision remade in same terms