The Upper Tribunal set aside a SEND decision after the First-tier Tribunal made a material factual mistake when evaluating competing speech-and-language evidence.
The mistake in the evidence assessment
The First-tier Tribunal preferred a joint professional report for several stated reasons. One was its finding that one of the report’s authors had personally assessed the child and administered a formal language assessment. The Upper Tribunal established that this was wrong: the form of the joint report showed that the professional had not personally assessed the child.
This was not treated as an incidental background error. Personal involvement appeared repeatedly within the reasons given for preferring one body of professional evidence over another.
Why one incorrect reason could affect the whole decision
An appeal is not automatically allowed whenever one reason is defective. The question is whether the decision can safely stand on the reasons that remain. Here, the First-tier Tribunal had not explained how the supposed personal involvement affected its overall assessment or brought its criticisms of the competing report together into a clear comparison.
The Upper Tribunal could not be sufficiently confident that the same decision would have been reached without the mistake. The decision was therefore set aside and the case remitted for a complete rehearing before a differently constituted panel.
What the decision does not establish
The Upper Tribunal did not decide the final speech-and-language provision the child should receive. The new panel must evaluate the evidence afresh. The judgment concerns the reliability and adequacy of the earlier reasoning, not an automatic preference for parental or local-authority evidence.
Black Sheep evidence lesson
For every professional report, create an evidence-provenance schedule: who met the child, who performed each assessment, which tool was administered, what records were reviewed and which conclusions belong to each author. When reports conflict, require the decision-maker to compare methodology, direct knowledge, underlying results and recommendations rather than relying on an assumed level of personal involvement.