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West Sussex County Council
Data availableSouth East
350
appeals registered, 2024 (official DfE figure)
357
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 — 259 (72.8%)
Contested, council lost — 65 (18.3%)
Contested, council won — 17 (4.8%)
Partially split — 15 (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 (357 appeals) — see how estimates work.
Freedom of Information responses
Detailed question set (by academic year 2022/23, 2023/24, 2024/25, and 1 Sep 2025-date) asking for EHCNA requests, refusals, mediation outcomes, and Tribunal appeals from refusals broken down by: (a) conceded by council before hearing, (b) decided by Tribunal for parent/young person, (c) decided by Tribunal for council, (d) withdrawn -- plus how many concessions came more than 12 weeks after the original refusal. Answer delivered as 'FOI 13166.xlsx' (10K), which rendered empty via automated tools in this session -- no figures recovered.
Caveat: This is the best-designed FOI question found in the whole South East sweep for exactly the (a)/(b)/(c)/(d) outcome breakdown this project wants -- strongly recommend manually downloading the xlsx at the URL above rather than re-requesting from the council.
Re-use terms stated by the council: Response states: 'The information supplied to you continues to be protected by the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. You are free to use it for your own purposes, including any non-commercial research you are doing and for the purposes of news reporting. Any other reuse, for example commercial publication, would require the permission of the copyright holder.'
Successful
Follow-up to the request above. Q1(a)-(c) (EHC Plan issue/refusal decisions and appeal outcomes conceded/parent-favour/council-favour/withdrawn) answered via attachment 'FOI 13327.xlsx' (16K) -- not machine-readable, no figures recovered. Q2-5 answered INLINE in the email body: mediation -- 'No reasons are recorded, as mediation is a confidential meeting. Team managers attend mediations.' Internal review / Inclusion Planning Meetings (IPM) -- 'Yes, we do have a local resolution and offer inclusion planning meetings (IPM)... This has led to a reduction in appeals... 197 assessments were started following a decision to assess at IPM' (1 Sep 2024 - 31 Aug 2025); '299' (1 Sep 2025 - date of response). 'Other' request-source category -- 'used to include health and historical use of our early years planned and review referral route.' Reasons for refusal -- 'WSCC do not use categories for recording reasons for refusal.'
Caveat: A follow-up thread on this request was still open as of 21 Aug 2026 (ref FOI/13578, due 18 Sep 2026), asking for the total number of IPMs convened (not just those resulting in an assessment) -- worth re-checking this thread after that date for more precise appeal-avoidance figures.
Re-use terms stated by the council: Same Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 non-commercial/research/news-reporting reuse note as the request above.