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• 03 Mar 2025

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  Yes. The FTT has to give reasons for its decision: regs FTT (HESC) Rules 2008 rule 30.

  But there are limits to what that means. In H v East Sussex CC [2009] EWCA Civ 249#16-17, the Court of Appeal explained that the FTT “is not required to be an elaborate formalistic product of refined legal draftsmanship [sic], but it must contain an outline of the story which has given rise to the complaint and a summary of the Tribunal's basic factual conclusions and a statement of the reasons which have led them to reach the conclusion which they do on those basic facts.”

  Despite that concerning an obligation only to give ‘summary reasons’ the UT has applied that approach to FTT decisions: SG v Somerset [2012] UKUT 353 (AAC)#9; DC & DC v Hertfordshire CC [2016] UKUT 379 (AAC) #38; Hertfordshire CC v MC and KC [2016] UKUT 0385 (AAC) #16.

  In order to decide whether reasons are sufficient, the UT considers the reasons of the FTT as a whole, will consider what is both explicit and implicit and in context: AG v LB Brent [2024] UKUT 166 (AAC) #14-15. The duty does not require the FTT to give reasons that track the full and detailed course of its fact-finding and decision-making: LB Hillingdon v AP and SP [2024] UKUT 388 #19.

  However, the obligation on the FTT is not distinct from that of a court, as any rate where there is a duty to address expert evidence: “Where there is a straightforward factual dispute whose resolution depends simply on which witness is telling the truth about events which he claims to recall, it is likely to be enough for the [FTT] (having no doubt summarised the evidence) to indicate simply that [it] believes X rather than Y; indeed there may be nothing else to say. But where the dispute involves something in the nature of an intellectual exchange, with reasons and analysis advanced on either side, the [FTT] must enter into the issues canvassed before [it] and explain why [it] prefers one case over another. That is likely to apply particularly in [appeals] where, as here, there is disputed expert evidence; but it is not necessarily limited to such cases”: Flannery v Halifax Estate Agencies Ltd [2000] 1 WLR 377, applied in Hampshire CC v JP [2009] UKUT 239 (AAC)#39.

  The FTT is “entitled to limit its consideration to the matters identified in the working document”: DL v LB Redbridge [2010] UKUT 293 (AAC)#13. 

  In A J v. LB of Croydon [2020] UKUT 246 (AAC) #93 the UT considered: “If parents say that a move to another school would be devastating for their child, the FTT is not bound to accept that assertion, but it must explain why it does not agree with it and the basis on which it disagrees with those assertions. It is not sufficient merely to say baldly and without supporting reasons that it was satisfied that (a) both in terms of its overall experience in supporting young people with ASD and consideration of [G’s] specific learning difficulties the proposed school was capable of meeting his needs and that (b) it further determined that the proposed placement was able to meet his needs.”

  The FTT will generally need to make findings on the disputed aspects of the case put such that a party knows why their case on each disputed aspect has been rejected: see e.g. JJ & EE v Buckinghamshire Council [2022] UKUT 345 (AAC) #33.

  

  Noddy No-nonsense Guide
  Authors: David Wolfe KC, Leon Glenister

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