Applying for a pre-action protocol letter

JR is a way for parents and young people to challenge the decisions of a public body, by asking a court to decide whether the decision of, in this instance, a local authority, has been made in a lawful, fair and reasonable way. The same is true where the local authority has failed to deliver on its statutory duties.

Before you can seek JR, you have to have given the local authority the opportunity to rectify the situation. This means making the public body aware of your intentions to send what is known as a ‘pre-action protocol letter’ (PAP) and your intention to seek JR.

Cost

For straightforward cases, such as a failure to adhere to EHCP timelines, we provide these letters free of charge. However, if your case involves multiple breaches, ongoing failures, or more complex legal matters, there will be a charge ranging from £150 to £300.

The final cost will depend on several factors, including:

  • The complexity of the issues involved.
  • The time required to review and assess your case.
  • The number of concerns that need to be addressed in the letter.

If your case requires input from our Legal Officer or their team due to its complexity, the cost will be at the higher end of this range. Please be assured that we will always inform you of any charges before proceeding.

If our team needs further information we shall contact you.

Registering for a PAP

Please click here to register, complete the form and attach the required supporting evidence. The list of documents required is here.

What happens next?

On completion of this, your case will be assessed for viability and added to our waiting list to be allocated to a volunteer. We will contact you to notify you of any charges before we proceed.

Should your circumstances change during this period and you no longer need a PAP letter, please let us know so we can remove you from the list.

If we have not received all the information with your registration, unfortunately we will be unable to process your request and are not able to chase for missing information.

Probably not. If you write to the complaints department, the official complaints procedure will kick in and that will be much slower; also this could be treated as an admission that there is an alternative route to dealing with your claim, which would make JR inappropriate as it is supposed to be used only as a last resort. This does not prevent you raising a complaint at a later stage, e.g. about overall delay.
For SEN cases, write to your case officer and copy in the Head of Department. For issues that are not limited to SEN, write to the Head of Education. For a transport issue, write to the head of school transport but again copy in the Education Department. You should be able to get addresses from the website; if in doubt, use the central Town Hall address and/or phone for the address.
If, as happens in the majority of cases, the issue is very clear and the LA concedes on receipt of the pre-action letter, that could mean the problem being resolved within two or three weeks. If you do have to take it to the next stage, solicitors can apply in urgent cases for emergency legal aid - and where a child is not receiving education or SEN provision, the Legal Aid Agency is prepared to treat it as urgent. That means that legal aid could be secured within a week or two of solicitors being instructed. It might be limited to something like requiring counsel's opinion in the early stages, but again that can normally be dealt with quickly. If or when Legal Aid is granted, notice of that fact has to be served on the LA and sometimes that alone persuades them to concede. If you have to start proceedings, how long it will take depends on the circumstances and the court's backlog. In theory a fully defended claim may take several weeks to come to hearing, but this is rare; only a tiny proportion of defended JR cases get that far because they tend to be settled. However, if the issue is urgent, you may be able to ask for 'interim relief': i.e. a temporary order granting what you need - for example tuition at home - until the main action itself is heard. This is normally arranged by way of a shorter hearing which could take place within 2-3 weeks of the action starting, or even sooner in a really urgent case.
Yes and no. If it becomes necessary, you would be referred to solicitors with a legal aid contract who would do virtually all the work, although you will obviously have to liaise with them about evidence etc. However, the vast majority of cases never proceed beyond the original pre-action letter. If, for instance, a local authority has missed a statutory deadline, it will be well aware that it has no defence to a JR claim and will not want to risk becoming liable for its own and the claimant's costs.
Assuming this is with the benefit of legal aid, almost certainly not. The law takes a pragmatic view that it is pointless to order someone who has no money to pay costs. There might be an order for costs which is not to be enforced without the leave of the court - that allows for the situation where the child suddenly comes into money somehow. However, neither we nor any solicitor we deal with regularly have never known any such order to be enforced.
If you were asking about legal aid for the pre-action letter, they were right. If they were talking about legal aid for the purposes of starting a JR claim, they were wrong, and unfortunately this is an error we come across too frequently. It is better to contact one of the firms that has an education or public law legal aid contract direct.
In theory yes, but in practice you would be much better advised to go to solicitors with experience in education and/or public law, ideally with a legal aid contract. We have seen some poor quality pre-action letters from solicitors or self-styled legal advisers/SEN advisers which were simply a waste of time and money. Details of solicitors with the relevant contracts can be obtained from the Legal Aid Agency.
There is nothing specifically requiring a pre-action letter to be sent by solicitors. However, it is fairly technical and ideally requires knowledge and experience of JR and all the law involved. The danger of a 'do it yourself' approach is that you may make an error or leave out something important, which will simply mean that you have wasted time and haven't saved any money because either your solicitors (when they get involved) have to redo the letter or, if you start proceedings, the case gets thrown out of court.
Yes: unless the parents themselves also qualify for legal aid in their own right, or unless the young person concerned is over 18, the pre-action letter won't be covered by legal aid. Solicitors will tend to charge a few hundred pounds. Ask us for details of the fee we ask for completing this on your behalf.
There is nothing specifically requiring a pre-action letter to be sent by solicitors. However, it is fairly technical and ideally requires knowledge and experience of Judicial Review and all the law involved. The danger of a 'do it yourself' approach is that you may make an error or leave out something important, which will simply mean that you have wasted time and haven't saved any money because either your solicitors (when they get involved) have to redo the letter or, if you start proceedings, the case gets thrown out of court.
Most education JR cases relate to the rights of the child. Therefore it is likely that your child will qualify financially for legal aid if or when it becomes necessary to start a claim.

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