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Wirral Metropolitan Borough Council
Data availableNorth West
103
appeals registered, 2024 (official DfE figure)
173
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 — 121 (69.5%)
Contested, council lost — 31 (17.8%)
Contested, council won — 19 (10.9%)
Partially split — 3 (1.7%)
This council's own answer doesn't give a usable outcome breakdown. This estimate applies the pooled outcome rate from other North West councils with real reported figures to this council's own real, officially-published appeal volume for 2025 (173 appeals) — see how estimates work.
Freedom of Information responses
Request by Michael Gaffney (30 Jan 2020) asked for cases defended at First-tier Tribunal (SEND) in 2019/2018/2017, cases won, and legal costs for each year. Council's xlsx attachment (titled 'FOI 144642 Michael Gaffney', provided 28 Feb 2020) gives a 3-row table: Years | Numbers [cases] | LA Win — 2016-17: 9 cases, 5 LA wins; 2017-18: 21 cases, 6 LA wins; 2018-2019: 36 cases, 2 LA wins. Legal costs (Counsel's fees) were given separately, in a follow-up email dated 16 March 2020: 'the Council's external spend, (Counsel's fees), for the Financial period (April) 2018 to (March) 2019 is 11,130 GBP. For the period 2019 to 2020 to date, it is 17,748 GBP but there are a number of fees that still require settling during this latter period so it is not a fixed figure. For the period prior to this namely 2017 to 2018 and prior... there was a different Spend Code and... a number of invoices were charged to the Code which makes it extremely difficult to determine the exact SEND spend emanating from it.'
Caveat: The council answered using financial-year labels (2016-17, 2017-18, 2018-2019) rather than the calendar years the requester actually asked about (2017, 2018, 2019), and the years given don't line up exactly with what was asked (an extra earlier year, 2016-17, is included; no distinct calendar-2019 figure was separately given). The FY2019-20 legal cost figure (17,748 GBP) was explicitly described as provisional/not final as of the March 2020 response. Legal costs for 2017-18 and earlier could not be reliably isolated by the council due to a change in accounting spend codes.