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Southampton City Council
Data availableSouth East
78
appeals registered, 2024 (official DfE figure)
89
appeals registered, 2025 (official DfE figure)
Data available. At least one Freedom of Information response gives real, extractable figures on tribunal appeals or outcomes for this council.
Thinking about appealing, or partway through it? These are free, independent sources of advice — not run by this site, and not run by any council.
- Southampton Information, Advice and Support (IAS) Service — this council's own free SEND information, advice and support service. Every council is legally required to fund one, at arm's length from itself · 0300 303 2677.
- IPSEA — Free, independent legal advice on SEN law — including EHC plans and tribunal appeals.
- SOS!SEN — Free helpline and 1:1 advice specifically on preparing a SEND tribunal appeal.
- Coram Children's Legal Centre — Free education law advice line, including SEN appeals and EHC plan reviews.
- GOV.UK: appeal an EHC plan decision — The official government guide to the appeals process itself — who can appeal, mediation, costs.
Estimated outcome breakdown
Estimated, not reported
Resolved before hearing — 65 (73%)
Contested, council lost — 16 (18%)
Contested, council won — 4 (4.5%)
Partially split — 4 (4.5%)
This council's own answer doesn't give a usable outcome breakdown. This estimate applies the pooled England-wide outcome rate (no regional sample was large enough to trust on its own) to this council's own real, officially-published appeal volume for 2025 (89 appeals) — see how estimates work.
By decision type
By decision type — 1 Jan 2019 - 1 Oct 2024 (aggregate)
| Category (council's own wording) | Appeals | Overturned |
|---|---|---|
| Refusal to assess/refusal to issue (decided on paper hearings) | 51 | — |
| tribunal hearings that the LA attended to defend (oral hearing; type not specified) | 18 | 12 |
Freedom of Information responses
Partially successful
Response to 'LBC REQUEST - FOI SEND provision' batch FOI (ref SCC-062788), covering 1 Jan 2019 to 1 Oct 2024 as a single aggregate period (not broken down by year). Q1 (SEND provision spend): total across FY2019/20-2023/24 given as £155,388,609, but the specific requested period refused under s12 (would require manual finance-system interrogation and a mini closedown exercise exceeding 18 hours) -- this figure is general SEND spend, not tribunal-specific, so out of scope for this extract. Q2 (legal team spend on SEND appeals): 'I can confirm that £3,950.00 was spent across the 2024/25 financial year' -- the rest of the requested period refused under s12 for the same reason. Q3 (SEND appeals received): 'There were 154 appeals lodged between 01.01.2019 and 01.10.2024.' Q4 (of these, decided by tribunal in favour of the council): 'Only 69 of the 154 appeals went to hearing to be decided by Tribunal. 51 of these were Refusal to assess/refusal to issue and were decided on paper hearings only. 18 were tribunal hearings that the LA attended to defend. Out of the 18 that were decided by tribunal whereby the LA attended the hearing to defend, the LA successfully defended 6.'
Caveat: All tribunal figures are aggregated across the whole ~5.75-year period (Jan 2019-Oct 2024) with no annual breakdown provided. Legal-cost figure is for FY2024/25 only (a single year at the very end of the requested range), not the full period.
Re-use terms stated by the council: "The information contained in this response is released under an Open Government Licence, which permits you to: Copy, publish, distribute and transmit the information; Adapt the information; Exploit the information commercially and non-commercially for example, by combining it with other information, or by including it in your own product or application. Where you do any of the above, however, you must acknowledge Southampton City Council as the source of the information in your product or application, and, where possible, provide a link to the Open Government Licence..."