Respond to an LA consultation

Written for: SENCos and inclusion leads.

When a local authority is considering naming your school in a child’s EHCP, it sends you the EHCP and asks whether the school can meet the child’s needs. The Consults page tracks each consultation from the moment it arrives: you log it, review the EHCP against your school’s context, annotate it, decide your answer and draft the response letter. You then record when the response was sent, the LA’s outcome and, if the child joins the school, the pupil.

Check the response deadline in the LA’s letter and follow your LA’s and your school’s procedures. Student Radar tracks the dates and helps you draft, but the decision and the letter are the school’s.

Log a consultation

1. In the sidebar, open Inclusion, then SEND, then Reviews & Documents, and choose Consults. The page is called LA EHCP consultations.
2. Click Upload LA EHCP.
3. In Upload LA EHCP consult, fill in:
   • Consultation title: a name you’ll recognise.
   • Local authority: the LA that sent the consultation.
   • Date received: the date the consultation reached the school.
   • LA deadline (optional): if you leave it blank, the deadline defaults to 15 calendar days after receipt. Enter the LA’s date if its letter gives a different one.
   • Year group: the year group the child would join.
   • Proposed class: leave it as To be determined if it isn’t decided.
   • Known pupil identifier: a name, UPN or LA reference, if you have one.
4. Under LA EHCP PDF, choose the PDF the LA sent.
5. Click Create consultation.

You’ll see “Consultation created” and the consultation appears under Active. The PDF is kept as a SENCo-only document.

If the PDF uploaded but the consultation wasn’t created, Unfinished consultation uploads appears at the top of the page. Click Resume next to the file and complete the form again. The PDF doesn’t need uploading again.

See what’s due

Across the top, Active counts the consultations you’re still working on, Day 10 flags and Day 13 escalations count those getting close to their deadline, and On roll links counts those linked to a pupil who’s now on your roll. Below are three tabs: Active, Past and On Roll.

Each active consultation shows the child, the LA, the date received and the deadline. It also shows context from your own roll for that year group:

• Pupils in year: how many pupils are in the year group.
• SEND context: how many of them have an EHCP or SEN Support.
• Annotations: how many annotations you’ve made on the EHCP.

If some pupils have no SEND status recorded, the card says so. Treat these figures as context for your professional judgement about whether the school can meet the child’s needs.

Click Show context to open School context intelligence for the selected consultation. Tick Use in response on the insights you want the response draft to draw on: only ticked insights are used. Click Refresh context to update them.

Annotate the LA’s EHCP

Click Annotate on the consultation. The EHCP opens in the annotation workspace, where you can highlight passages, pull out excerpts and add notes. See Upload and annotate a SEND document for how the workspace works.

For consultations, the labels under Send to help you weigh up the plan, for example Lacks specificity, Unmeasurable, Beyond staff expertise, Resourcing gap, Capacity reached, Can deliver as specified, Can deliver with adjustment and Already in place. Some labels ask for more detail, such as the Specific provision and what would be needed to close the gap.

Decide and draft the response

1. On the consultation, choose your Working decision: Can meet need, Can meet need with conditions or Cannot meet need. The choice is saved straight away.
2. Click Draft response.
3. In Draft LA response, click Generate draft. Student Radar drafts a response letter from the consultation, the context you ticked and your annotations.
4. Read the draft and edit it in the editor. Use Bold, Italic, Bullets and Numbered to format it, and Preview to see how it looks. Editorial notes beside the letter point out Gaps to check, any Case-strength concern, Unused evidence and Reviewer notes.
5. Click Save.
6. Click Download response to save the letter, then send it to the LA in the usual way.

The draft is a drafting aid only. A qualified SENCo or headteacher must review it before it’s sent. Student Radar doesn’t send the letter to the LA for you.

To start again, click Regenerate draft. This replaces the editor text and the editorial notes, including unsaved edits. If you change your mind, click Restore previous.

Record that the response was sent

1. On the consultation, click Record response sent.
2. Check the saved letter shown in the window.
3. Enter the Date sent and the Recipient, and choose the Channel: Email, Post, LA portal or Other.
4. Tick the box to confirm you’ve reviewed the saved response and that it’s the letter you sent.
5. Click Confirm response sent.

The consultation moves to Past. Its letter and evidence are then read-only: click Open read-only workspace to look back at the annotations, or View sent response to see the letter.

Record the outcome and link the pupil

On the Past tab, choose the LA’s decision under LA outcome, for example Placement confirmed, Alternative placement named or Withdrawn. It’s saved as soon as you choose.

To record which pupil the consultation was about, click Link pupil, search under Pupil name, choose the pupil and click Confirm pupil link. Placement-confirmed outcomes need a linked pupil. Linked pupils who are now on roll appear on the On Roll tab. You can also link a pupil while the consultation is still active.

Notes

• Take the built-in tour: click Take a tour at the top of the page.
• Permissions: many staff can open the Consults page, but what you can do depends on the permissions your school has given you.

If something doesn’t work

What you see	What to do
“LA, received date, year group, and the LA EHCP PDF are required.”	Fill in Local authority, Date received and Year group, and choose the PDF.
“Options could not be loaded.”	Click Try again next to Year group.
“Select whether the school can meet need before drafting the LA response.”	Choose a Working decision other than Undecided, then click Draft response again.
“Save a response letter before recording it as sent.”	Open Draft response, save the letter, then record it as sent.
“Confirmed-placement outcomes require a pupil link.”	Click Link pupil and link the pupil first, then choose the outcome again.
“No matching active pupils.”	Check the spelling. Only pupils currently on roll in your school can be linked.
“Unable to check unfinished uploads.”	Click Retry.
“Context will generate when the consultation record is created. Refresh if this was uploaded moments ago.”	Click Refresh context.