Held, appeal allowed. (1) To place the responsibility for part of Section F of the education, health and care plan on one named individual, and where that individual was not a lawful delegate or proxy for the local authority, might carry a serious risk of the local authority being in breach of its duty under section 42(2) of the Children and Families Act 2014 “to secure the specified special educational provision for the child or young person”. That uncertainty had played out in the present case where, following the retirement of the chosen expert, what was seen by the tribunal as an important aspect of the special educational provision needed by the child did not form part, and could not be part, of that provision because the sole actor identified by the tribunal, who was to co-ordinate and compile that provision, had not been and was no longer able to do so. The provision for review of education, health and care plans found in section 44 of the 2014 Act could not assist since that provided for review of an existing plan, which would usually if not always take effect from a later date, and any change after a review had taken place was unable as a matter of law to affect the legality of the plan before it was reviewed. It followed that the plan was unlawful in so far as it provided for production of an “All About” document by the named expert. It was not possible to overcome the difficulty in the present case by setting aside the plan and remaking it in the same terms save for removing the expert’s name as the person responsible for compiling the “All About” document, since, given the importance the First-tier Tribunal had attached to the expert’s role, it was unclear what role that document ought or ought not to have in Section F and, more fundamentally, on setting aside the tribunal’s decision the whole of the appeal would need to be redecided on the basis of the child’s needs and the special educational provision he required at the present time (paras 27–29, 31, 49).

(2) The special education provision made in the plan by reference to the ‘All About” document also lacked specificity, since even if the expert had not been named as the author of that document, given its centrality in answering the dispute between the parties about how best to approach interactions with the child the tribunal, as the arbiter of that dispute, had to say more about how it intended the document to be compiled and what it ought to contain. In that regard, one omission was that the provision set out by the tribunal left it unclear and uncertain which professionals were to be involved and, more particularly, whether the grandmother, given her role in educating her grandson at home and her being a qualified and experienced teacher, as the tribunal was aware, was to be included as one of the “different professionals involved” (paras 32, 49).