Add to your assistant

Rulebook · Local authority letter

Council's decision after a review

After a review meeting (annual or early), the council must decide whether to keep the plan as it is, change (amend) it, or stop it, and tell you within 4 weeks of the meeting. If it keeps or stops the plan, the letter must cover appeals, the time limit, mediation, help to resolve disagreements, information and advice, and the Tribunal's recommendations power. If it will amend, the High Court has said the letter must set out the proposed changes.

Plenda checks 26 things in a letter like this: 19 are required by the Act or Regulations; 1 is required by case law; 1 is Code of Practice "should"; 5 are good practice. If the decision is to stop maintaining the plan, the check for a decision to cease a plan also applies. If the decision is to amend, the proposed amendments, a copy of the plan and the supporting evidence must be sent, with notice of the right to ask for a particular school or college and of where to find information about schools and colleges. Where this letter sets out the amendments, these are checked in it; where the amendments come in a later letter, the check for proposed amendments covers that letter. The parent or young person then has at least 15 days, beginning with the day they are served, to comment, ask for a particular school or college and ask for a meeting, and the final amended plan, or a decision not to amend, is due within 8 weeks of their being sent. The appeal information then comes with the final amended plan, or the decision not to amend. The next review must take place within the 12 months starting with the date the plan was last reviewed. If no decision has been sent within 4 weeks of the meeting, there is no decision to appeal yet, and the plan stays in force. Delay is dealt with through other routes, such as a complaint. Plenda does not say what effect a gap in a letter has on the decision. A gap can still matter: it can be raised with the council or in a complaint and, where the decision can be appealed, it may be relevant to a late appeal, because the Tribunal decides whether to accept one. This check compares the text supplied with what the law requires in a letter like this, and with good practice. It does not judge whether the decision itself is right.

What a letter like this includes

Type of rule
Law (Act or Regulations)This is the law, set by an Act of Parliament or by Regulations.
Rule id
notice.review_decision
Rules version
england-2026.10
Law as at
30 September 2026

Sources

Related

Check a letter

If you think this rule is wrong or out of date, please tell us. A person reads every report.

Report a problem with this rule

The whole rulebook