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Case Study
Overview
Hounslow Language Service (HLS) has been funded by central government
and the local council for many years to provide essential language
support and teaching to children in schools in Hounslow who have English
as an additional language. The Language Service has an excellent track
record and results in the borough for children starting school with
little or no English are very good as a result. The Language Service
is recognised nationally as a very successful model of how to provide
and co-ordinate language support.
As well as funding from central government, in 2008-09 HLS received
£835,000 of subsidy from the London Borough of Hounslow. On 3rd March
2009, the full Council made a decision at their meeting to set the
following year’s budget for 2009-10 to cut this subsidy entirely.
If this went ahead, it would have a devastating effect on not only
the children receiving language support, but also the other children
in their schools, teachers and other staff, trying to provide the
best education possible to all children within the school.
The situation raised public law issues as to a lack of consultation
with schools and parents, a failure to consider the impact on ethnic
minority children and a fundamental misunderstanding of how schools’
budgets work.
The Claimants
In March 2009, we were contacted by parents of pupils at Hounslow
Heath Infant School who were concerned about the withdrawal of funding
from the Language Service and the impact this would have on their
children. The school would lose thousands of pounds of funding as
a result of the decision and did not have money elsewhere in their
budget to replace it.
The school also faced losing the support and expertise of the central
team at the Language Service which helps to recruit and train new
teachers and language assistants as well as providing ongoing services
such as assessments for new pupils and interpreting at parents’ evenings
and other essential meetings.
We were therefore asked to try to challenge the decision that the
Council had made to withdraw the subsidy.
What happened
We went to the school and spoke to the parents about their concerns.
They told us that the staff at the school had not known about the
proposal until immediately before it was due to be voted on at the
full Council meeting. The parents explained what a difference language
support made to their children and how concerned they were about the
service being cut.
Three of the parents agreed to be the lead claimants in a test case,
and they were each granted legal aid.
We looked at all the documents around the Council’s decision, including
the budget papers prepared for the Council meeting on 3rd March and
also the minutes from that meeting. Although there had been a discussion
about the cuts, there had been no input from teachers or the Language
Service staff about the decision. Councillors were making sweeping
statements about schools having other money available to pay for the
service and there was no mention of any consideration of their duties
under the Race Relations Act to consider the impact of the decision
on race equality.
We therefore advised the parents that the decision by the Council
appeared to be unlawful and we wrote a letter before claim setting
out the legal arguments and asking the Council to withdraw their decision
to cut the subsidy. We asked them to have a proper consultation process
and to carry out a race equality impact assessment on the proposal
to cut the subsidy. We threatened to bring a judicial review claim
on behalf of the parents if the Council did not withdraw their decision
to make the cuts and have a new decision-making process that was fair
and lawful.
Within two weeks we had a response from the Council stating that the
decision of 3rd March had not been a final decision but was only “in
principle” and that the cuts would not be implemented for many months
(although it had in fact been clear that the Council intended to go
ahead with the decision and no further consideration or consultation
was planned). After a further exchange of correspondence, the Council
confirmed they would in fact keep the subsidy in place until at least
the end of this calendar year (31st December 2009), when the cut was
meant to have been implemented from the 1st September 2009.
The Council also agreed to carry out a consultation process that would
involve schools, parents and community groups affected by the decision.
They agreed to undertake a full Race Equality Impact Assessment on
the proposal and to take all of this into account before making a
final decision in July 2009.
The outcome
When the decision was finally taken in July, the Council decided that
no cuts should be implemented until further consultation with individual
schools had taken place and the Council had considered the matter
again as part of their budget plans for the next financial year (2010-11).
The Council also confirmed that the funding and services would stay
in place at least until 1st April 2010, a further two terms’ extra
funding (worth approximately £1/2 million) in comparison to what they
had originally proposed.
Our clients and their children’s school were very pleased with the
outcome, despite concerns that cuts would still be made in the future.
The fact that the Council now accepts that individual schools must
be consulted on the impact of any cuts before these are implemented,
goes some way to allaying their fears of their children losing vital
services without any alternatives being provided. The new process
will enable schools to plan their language services and avoid children
missing out on the support they need.
Links
For more information about the Hounslow
Language Service click
here
See also:
BBC
website (links to video), 3.3.09
Croydon
Guardian, 4.3.09
Hounslow
Chronicle, 16.9.09
Hounslow
online, 24.7.09
Further information
For more information about the judicial review process please visit
the resources section of our website.
For more information about our Public Law and Human Rights Team please
visit our website, email publiclawteam@pierceglynn.co.uk or telephone 020 7407 0007.
May 2009
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