England, added up
Every council's figures rolled into one national picture — real appeal volume from official statistics, outcome rates estimated from the fullest FOI disclosures available. See exactly how before quoting anything below.
Of the 7,413 estimated cases that actually reached a contested tribunal ruling, councils won an estimated 17.8% — about 1 in 6.
Articles
What “99% of SEND tribunal appeals succeed” actually means
The most-quoted statistic about SEND tribunals is true and also misleading — because it treats two very different outcomes as the same thing.
What actually gets overturned
Not all SEND appeals are the same fight. One category — a council refusing to even assess a child — gets overturned four times out of five.
Where the record is still blank
Two-thirds of England's councils have already told someone their SEND tribunal record. This is a map of where nobody has an answer yet — and why.
The evidence base
34 councils gave a Freedom of Information response detailed enough to classify all four outcome buckets, covering 3,839 pooled appeal outcomes between them. That pool is what every estimate on this site is built from — not a random sample of England, but the fullest real evidence available. Browse the source data by council →