Legal Aid
Some parents can get funding for ‘legal help’ from the Legal Aid Agency to help with claims to the SEND Tribunal. Legal Aid covers all the preparation work needed to submit an appeal and preparation for the hearing, but it does not usually pay for a solicitor to attend the hearing to act for you and make your case.
In very rare exceptional circumstances, some people can apply for Legal Aid to get help in the hearing itself. A solicitor accepting Legal Aid would be able to tell you if your case qualified for this and make the application for such funding.
It is helpful to know that the ‘legal help’ can cover the costs of professional evidence reports needed to support the appeal.
Legal Aid is a means tested allowance and you will have to provide evidence of your income, investments, savings and those of your partner, to access the free Legal Help. If you are in receipt of certain benefits and do not have capital of more than £8,000, you will be able to access Legal Aid to prepare for an appeal at the SEND Tribunal.
You can check if you can get Legal Aid using the online calculator here.
If you are unsure or want to get help to access Legal Aid you should first contact Civil Legal Advice and if you are eligible a specialist education advisor will help you through the process.
It is worth knowing that Legal Aid can also help with challenging decisions through a judicial review for example if the local authority have been unlawful by not following procedures or sticking to timescales.
If you can get legal aid, it will cover both the pre action and the action stages of the judicial review claim. If you can’t get legal aid because your income is too high, it is worth knowing that children and young people with SEN can get legal aid in their own right, based on their income. This means that as a parent you would have to cover the costs of the pre action stage, but everything after that could be met by legal aid.