Home › East of England › Norfolk County Council
Norfolk County Council
Data availableEast of England
532
appeals registered, 2024 (official DfE figure)
569
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.
Estimated outcome breakdown
Estimated, not reported
Resolved before hearing — 413 (72.6%)
Contested, council lost — 104 (18.3%)
Contested, council won — 28 (4.9%)
Partially split — 24 (4.2%)
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 (569 appeals) — see how estimates work.
Freedom of Information responses
Partially successful
Q1 (SEND spend 2019-2024) refused under FOIA s.21(1) as already publicly available (council cited Norfolk Schools Forum papers and Cabinet CMIS as the public sources). Q2 (legal/tribunal costs) by financial year: 2018-19 £212,618; 2019-20 £382,702; 2020-21 £556,951; 2021-22 £628,200; 2022-23 £747,600; 2023-24 £898,769; 2024-25 (forecast at Oct 2024) £1,558,760; Total £4,985,600. Q3/Q4 (appeals lodged and tribunal outcome), by calendar year, exactly as the council presented it: '2019: 174 lodged, 31 decided by tribunal (18% of lodged), 18 upheld (58% of those decided by tribunal; 10% of total lodged). 2020: 197 lodged, 43 decided by tribunal (22%), 23 upheld (53% of those decided; 12% of total). 2021: 239 lodged, 28 decided by tribunal (12%), 19 upheld (68% of those decided; 12% of total). 2022: 253 lodged, 43 decided by tribunal (17%), 27 upheld (63% of those decided; 11% of total). 2023: 359 lodged, 62 decided by tribunal (17%), 35 upheld (56% of those decided; 10% of total) — council noted "4% of appeals are yet to have an outcome". 2024 (as of 10 November): 446 lodged, 26 decided by tribunal (6%), 20 upheld (77% of those decided; 6% of total) — council noted "60% of appeals are yet to have an outcome".'
Caveat: IMPORTANT INTERPRETIVE CAVEAT: the original question asked 'of these appeal cases decided by tribunal, how many were in favour of the council?' but the council's response table only labels the relevant column 'Number upheld' / '% upheld', without stating explicitly whether 'upheld' means the appeal was upheld in favour of the appellant (parent), or the council's original decision was upheld (i.e. in favour of the council). Peterborough City Council's response to the same national campaign (see that entry in this file) explicitly explains its own methodology for this exact ambiguity, which may help interpret Norfolk's figures too — but Norfolk did not provide an equivalent clarifying statement, so the direction of 'upheld' here should be treated as unconfirmed pending clarification from Norfolk CC. Also: Q1 (spend) was refused as already public rather than answered directly. Council held Q3/Q4 data only by calendar year (not financial year as first offered). 2023 and especially 2024 figures are incomplete/provisional since a large share of appeals from those years had not yet reached an outcome at the time of reporting.