Suffolk County Council to face legal action from 750 parents and carers of children with special educational needs and disabilities

Parents and carers of children and young people with special educational needs (SEND) and disabilities, have started a crowdfunding campaign after announcing they are taking legal action in response to Suffolk County Council's 'persistent breaches of the law'.

The group, Campaign for Change (Suffolk SEND), has already raised more than half of their £2,500 crowdjustice target, and are aiming to hold the local authority to account 'for unlawful practises in SEND', which they hope will then help other parents across other areas of the country.

Responding to the campaign group, Suffolk County Council said it is 'making significant improvements' to the way they deliver education to children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities, including the delivery of 1,317 new specialist places.

Alex Tomczynski, member of the organising committee for the Campaign for Change who has twins with neurodevelopmental conditions, said he and his wife feel lucky that they had the financial resources and career experience to have taken the authority to tribunal four times, to ensure their children got the support they need.

Mr Tomczynski, who lives in Ipswich said despite encountering 'people in power' in his work life, dealing with the local authority has been an 'absolute minefield'.

He said: "You have to become an expert in educational law, you have to fight every step of the way."

Mr Tomczynski, described the stack of box files he has filled with correspondence between him and the council and said it can take 'weeks and weeks of time' to prepare for just one tribunal.

He said: "I am acutely aware that there are lots of families in Suffolk that don't have the money to fight the council and everyday we are hearing from parents that have been put through the wrangle.’

The Campaign for Change has teamed up with a London law firm stating that despite the Council's SEND action plan, released following a peer review by Lincolnshire County Council, 'little if anything has changed for their families'.

On Twitter the Campaign for Change said: "We are taking legal action in response to Suffolk County Council's persistent breaches of the law".

In a further statement a campaign spokesman said: "It is self-evident from Council published data that the Council is non-compliant with SEND law in many respects, such as duty to annually review statutory Education and Health Care Plans and to produce compliant plans.

"The Council's SEND Finance Manager has also said on the record that they have not met their statutory duty to deliver provision such as occupational therapy to disabled children. This public record reflects the distressing experience of many families in Suffolk.

"The Council's Monitoring Officer refused our request for a statutory investigation into the legality of SEND policies and decisions

"We asked the Cabinet Member Councillor Rachel Hood at the Education Scrutiny Committee meeting when all children in Suffolk would receive a legally compliant SEND service. She did not provide a substantive answer.

"It would seem that the council does not plan on fully complying with SEND law - they must be held to account, and the situation remedied."

Responding, Councillor Rachel Hood, Cabinet Member for Education, SEND and Skills, said: "At Suffolk County Council, we are making significant improvements to the way we deliver education to children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities.

"Every area of the service has either been improved or improvement is happening now, it is a substantial and expensive piece of work but one to which we are fully committed.

"Our progress is robustly scrutinised by senior officers from the Department for Education, who have made it clear that they remain confident in our plans and the progress being made, and also on a regular basis by the Scrutiny and Audit Committees."

The authority stated that 22, of the actions set out in in the Lincolnshire Review of September 2021 have now been actioned, with the remaining 10 actions to be completed by December 2022.

They have agreed the delivery of 1,317 new specialist places either in new schools or units linked to mainstream schools by 2026 - 826 of these new places are now open across Suffolk.

The council has also has invested £55m in new school places and 42 new members of staff have been recruited and recruitment is ongoing.