[2025] UKUT 010 (AAC)

The third ground of appeal is that the First-tier Tribunal arguably erred in law by failing to identify what it meant by ‘restraint’. My grant of permission to appeal on this ground was influenced by the issue addressed by the fourth ground of appeal, which was that the Tribunal arguably erred in law by failing to explain why it rejected the parental argument that D should be able to access the community without the need for physical restraint.

Taking the fourth ground first, on my analysis the Appellant’s case before the First-tier Tribunal was not that she objected to any use of physical restraint. The Appellant’s final written submissions to the Tribunal, which were not before me when I granted permission to appeal, argued that two people should be available to “use fluid restraint and/or two-person escort techniques to keep him safe”, that D “cannot be restrained or escorted safely by one person”, and “the use of ongoing physical restraint of this sort is undignified and unsafe” which was a reference to the Houdini harness referred to earlier in the submissions. Moreover, Ms Dennison’s email of 29 April 2022 anticipated the need for some kind of ‘physical intervention’, from two people, to keep D safe when accessing the community. The Appellant’s case was not that D should be free of all physical restraint in the community. This undermines the basis on which permission to appeal was granted on Ground 4. The Tribunal did not reject the parental case put to it about restraint.

Part of the context to my grant of permission to appeal on Ground 3 was the parental argument that they were taken by surprise when they read the First-tier Tribunal’s decision and discovered that it had ordered provision which mentioned ‘restraint’. As I have just explained, that cannot have been the case. The fact is that the potential type/s of restraint anticipated was described in the Appellant’s own evidence. In those circumstances, I am satisfied that the Tribunal did not err in law by failing to specify the type/s of restraint that it had in mind when making provision for the additional support worker to have restraint training. A counsel of perfection might have called for a more detailed description of the types of restraint techniques for which training was required. However, a Tribunal’s reasons are not required to be perfect and, in a case where the Appellant’s own case signalled the type of restraint techniques considered suitable, the requirement to provide sufficient reasons was discharged by the Tribunal’s requirement for the additional support worker to have restraint training albeit of an unspecified type.

For the above reasons, Grounds 3 and 4 are not made out.