[2025] UKUT 191 (AAC)

X has Trisomy 21 (Down’s Syndrome) with cognitive and communication disabilities and associated motor, learning and some sensory differences. His ALN are set out, now uncontroversially, in Section 2A of the Working Document IDP issued by the ETW Panel with its Decision on 25 November 2024.

X has been in receipt of both SALT and OT from the Health Board since 2016. Since 2017, his parents also employed a SALT therapist to work with X including at school on a 1:1 basis until February 2024, when the school (based on advice received from the Health Board) said that the therapist would no longer be allowed to give that support in school.

When he joined the school, X was in receipt of an SEN Statement under the 1996 Act. In 2023, the Council started the process of transitioning him from that Statement to an IDP under the 2018 Act. During the discussions towards that transition, various issues arose including in relation to the model and quantity of direct SALT therapy. Mrs X supported the recommendation of the SALT therapist who had worked with X since 2016, namely that X required intensive school-based intervention involving weekly speech and language sessions, i.e. ten sessions of one hour each per term during term time, and half termly home sessions (“Plan A"). The Health Board preferred the model proposed by an NHS SALT therapist who had also known X for some time, which involved four hour-long sessions each half term – two at the beginning and two at the end of the half term (“Plan B”). Plan B was therefore a different model from Plan A, with less SALT provision (eight rather than ten sessions per term).

On 22 May 2024, the Council issued a final IDP with the Plan B SALT and OT provision recommended by the Heath Board being listed in Section 2C and not in Section 2B.

On 10 June 2024, Mrs X appealed the IDP to the ETW challenging the Council’s decision as reflected in the IDP as to (i) the model (and, thus, the amount) of direct SALT therapy, (ii) the provider of the therapy and (iii) where the SALT and OT provision should be listed in the IDP, i.e. whether it should be listed in Section 2B instead of (or, at least, as well as) Section 2C. Issue (iii) to an extent turned on issue (ii), because Mrs X contended that the therapy should be provided by private individuals rather than any NHS body: but she also submitted, more fundamentally, that, even if supplied by an NHS body, the provision should appear in Section 2B as well as Section 2C.

The ETW Panel concluded in the ETW Decision that:

That decision was set out in the ETW Decision Reasons and in the IDP Working Document appended to that Decision. That Working Document was amended under the slip rule on 29 January 2025. The Council issued the IDP in accordance with the amended IDP Working Document on 17 February 2025.