Notification to other agencies of a proposal to assess
3:16.   When informing parents of the proposal to assess, the LEA must copy the proposal to:
- the local authority's social services department
- the district health authority
- t he head teacher of the child's school.
(Regulation 5(1))

The LEA should address the copy of the proposal to the designated officers of the SSD and DHA and should also copy the proposal to their own educational psychology service and any other relevant agencies, such as the education welfare service, who might be asked for advice should the assessment proceed.  LEAs are not at this point asking these agencies to provide advice, but alerting them to the possibility of a request for advice in the near future.  Such notice will give the health service and other agencies the opportunity to collate records and consult others who might be involved in providing advice.  Early action at this stage within the health service and social services departments will in effect serve to extend the time available to those agencies for gathering advice, and thus help them meet the statutory time limits.

A formal request from a parent

3:17.   Under section 172 or 173 of the Act, parents may ask the LEA to conduct a statutory assessment.  The LEA must comply with such a request, unless they have made a statutory assessment within six months of the date of the request or unless they conclude, upon examining all the available evidence, that a statutory assessment is not necessary.

3:18.   If schools, external specialists, including LEA support and educational psychology services, and parents have been working in partnership at stage 3, the parental request for a statutory assessment will often have been discussed between them and should come as no surprise to the LEA.  But a parental request for a statutory assessment may reflect dissatisfaction or disagreement with the action taken in the school-based stages.  Whatever the background, the LEA must take all parental requests seriously and take action immediately.


An LEA is responsible for a pupil at an independent school if he or she lives in their area and has been placed in that school at the expense of the LEA or the Funding Authority or has been brought to the LEA's attention as having or probably having special educational needs.  The LEA must identify any such children who require statements.
Section 165(3)

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