KTS v Governing Body of Milby Primary School [2026] UKUT 41 (AAC) (27 January 2026)

Executive summary

The Upper Tribunal allowed the appeal against the First-tier Tribunal’s refusal to vary a rule 14 reporting restriction order and also allowed the application to vary the Upper Tribunal’s own order. It held that the earlier decision involved an error of law and remade the order so that the governing body and the school could be named, while maintaining anonymity for the child and other children.

Key points

• Parties: KTS, the parents of a child with autism and an EHC plan, v the Governing Body of Milby Primary School.
• Holding: the Upper Tribunal allowed the appeal, set aside the First-tier Tribunal’s refusal to vary the order, and varied the rule 14 order in the same terms for both tribunals.
• Reasoning: it addressed the proper use of rule 14 orders in SEND disability discrimination cases, stressing the relationship between open justice and anonymity in the tribunal context.
• Reasoning: it noted the FTT SEND is a statutory tribunal without inherent jurisdiction and that its powers derive from rule 14 of the HESC Tribunal Procedure Rules.
• Outcome on publication: the school and governing body may be named if the decisions are published, but D and other children remain protected from identification.
• Sanctions/export-control angle: none apparent on the face of the decision; this is a privacy/open-justice ruling in a school disability case.

Why it matters

The decision is relevant to information-control and disclosure risk because it clarifies when schools and governing bodies can be publicly named in SEND tribunal litigation. For sanctions or national-security audiences, its value is indirect: it shows how UK tribunals calibrate confidentiality, publication, and contempt risk in sensitive proceedings.

Implications

For compliance and litigation strategy, the case supports targeted rather than blanket anonymity in SEND disputes and confirms that published decisions may identify institutional respondents while protecting children’s identities. Parties seeking to publish tribunal outcomes should focus on whether the order is no wider than necessary and on the tribunal’s error of law if open-justice considerations were not properly balanced.