SEND Tribunal Success Rates: What the Numbers Really Say

Updated 4 July 2026 · Legal citations verified against legislation.gov.uk

If you are staring at a refusal letter and trying to decide whether an appeal is worth the energy you do not have, one number follows you around the internet: 99%. It is real, it comes from official Ministry of Justice statistics and it is genuinely remarkable. But it is also widely quoted without explanation, and a tired parent deserves the honest version. This article sets out the actual 2024/25 numbers, what the 99% figure does and does not mean, why families win so often and what all of it tells you if you are deciding whether to appeal.

The 2024/25 numbers

The Ministry of Justice publishes tribunal statistics every year. For 2024/25 the headline figures for the First-tier Tribunal (SEND) were these:

• About 25,000 SEND appeals were registered during the year.
• 24% of them were appeals against a refusal to secure an EHC needs assessment, making it one of the most commonly challenged decisions in the system.
• Of the appeals that went all the way to a decision, 99% were decided in the family's favour.

Sit with that last figure for a moment. When an independent panel looked at the evidence and applied the law, the council's decision was upheld in almost no cases at all. In any other area of public decision-making, a first-instance decision that loses 99% of the time on review would be treated as a crisis.

What the 99% figure means

The figure refers to decided appeals: cases where the tribunal actually read the papers and made a ruling. In those cases, the panel applied the real statutory tests, and for refusal-to-assess appeals that means section 36(8) of the Children and Families Act 2014. The council must secure an assessment if the child has or may have special educational needs and it may be necessary for special educational provision to be made through an EHC plan. Both limbs say may, and the threshold is deliberately low, lower than the test for issuing a plan.

So the honest meaning of 99% is this: when refusal decisions are held up against the law they are supposed to apply, they almost never stand. The gap between how councils decide and how the law reads is that wide.

What the 99% figure does not mean

Three careful points, because you deserve precision rather than a sales pitch.

• It does not count concessions. Councils often concede after an appeal is registered, agreeing to assess rather than defend the refusal. Those cases end before a decision, so they are not inside the 99% figure. That is still a good outcome for the family, but it means the decided cases are only part of the story.
• It does not mean appealing is effortless. An appeal still needs a mediation certificate, a completed form SEND35A within the deadline and grounds that answer the council's reasons with evidence. That is structured, paper-based work, but it is work.
• It is not a guarantee. Every appeal turns on its own evidence. A statistic about thousands of cases cannot promise anything about one child. What it can do is correct the widespread feeling that appealing is a long shot. On the numbers, it is the refusal that is the long shot.

Why families win so often

Families do not win because tribunals are soft. They win because many refusals are built on tests the law does not contain. Refusal letters regularly rely on the absence of a diagnosis, on the school not having spent enough of its SEN budget, on incomplete cycles of the graduated approach, on the child coping academically or on rigid local criteria. None of these appear in section 36(8). The SEND Code of Practice 2015 points the other way too: paragraph 9.14 requires attention to the whole picture, including emotional and social development and health needs, and paragraph 9.16 says a council may have local criteria but must be prepared to depart from them where there is a compelling reason. When a tribunal strips those invented requirements away and applies the actual test, the refusal usually has nothing left to stand on. Our guide to unlawful blanket policies goes through each of these reasons in detail.

The pressure behind the numbers

The Department for Education's January 2026 release explains why the front door is guarded so fiercely. There were 718,800 children and young people with EHC plans in England at January 2026, a rise of 12.5% in a year and the largest annual increase since 2014. Local authorities received 162,700 requests for assessment during 2025, up 5.3%, and issued 110,700 new plans, up 13.3%. Demand is enormous and rising, and refusing assessments is one way overstretched councils manage it. Understanding that helps with something important: a refusal is very often about capacity and criteria, not about your child. The system is struggling, and the tribunal exists as the correction mechanism when that struggle produces unlawful decisions.

What this means if you are deciding whether to appeal

Put the pieces together and the decision becomes clearer. There is no fee for a SEND appeal. Refusal-to-assess appeals are normally decided on the papers, so there is no courtroom and no cross-examination. The deadline is 2 months from the decision letter or 1 month from a mediation certificate, whichever is later, and you only have to consider mediation, not attend it. And when these appeals are decided, 99% go the family's way, with many more ending early because the council concedes.

The realistic promise is not "you will win". It is this: the appeal process is free, paper-based and designed for parents, the legal test is on your side and the statistics say refusals rarely survive scrutiny. If your refusal letter leans on reasons that are not in section 36(8), the numbers suggest it is exactly the kind of decision the tribunal overturns. Start with our guide to what to do after a refusal, then work through the SEND35A appeal guide step by step.

Frequently asked questions