[2024] UKUT 128 (AAC)

the Council asserted that the “Tribunal appears to have assumed that transferring an EHC Plan under regulation 15 procedure guarantees continuity of provision in the terms of the inherited EHC Plan”. It did no such thing. It simply identified the risk that there would be no continuity of provision in the instant case should the EHCP cease. That was plainly a risk which it was entitled to find. In any event, the fact that “a receiving local authority could also cease to maintain the EHC Plan” was neither here nor there because the undisputed circumstances before the Tribunal were that there was no receiving local authority. The Tribunal was dealing with a certainty that, if the local authority ceased the plan while T was in Dubai, there would be no prospect of a receiving local authority continuing it.

the Council was simply attempting to disagree with the finding of prejudice made by the Tribunal because it had a different assessment of the evidence. The factor identified by the Council was the stuff of pure conjecture. Fundamentally, the finding about prejudice by the Tribunal was not one which no reasonable tribunal could have made (and the Council did not suggest that it was a perverse finding on the evidence).