At least eight local authorities cancelled or promised to review contracts with a law firm that specialises in fighting support claims for children with special educational needs (SEN), after its managing director published a series of tweets apparently gloating at parents.



Mark Small, the founder of Baker Small, which until Tuesday acted for around 20 local authorities, attracted widespread condemnation from parents of children with disabilities after publicly celebrating “a great ‘win’” over a family seeking educational support for their child. The firm later deleted the posts and made a donation to charity.

Westminster, Cambridgeshire, Kensington and Chelsea, Hammersmith and Fulham, Buckinghamshire, Norfolk and Hertfordshire suspended their contracts with the firm or said relations would be ended within months. A number of other councils that use Baker Small said they hoped to bring SEN legal work in-house as a result of the firm’s ill-judged comments.

One of the tweets said: “Crikey, had a great ‘win’ last week which sent some parents into a storm!” Another message celebrated a tribunal victory over an attempt by parents to get funding for Applied Behavioural Analysis (ABA), a widely respected intervention that can help autistic children to learn, commenting: “Great ABA Trib win this week … interesting to see how parents continue to persist with it. Funny thing is parents think they won ;)”.

Responding to widespread outrage at the flippant tone of his posts, Small posted a photograph of a kitten laughing, beneath the message: “Some great tweets received today from people who just see a one-sided argument … just shared them with my cat …” His deleted tweets are still visible on a number of special needs support group websites.



The Baker Small tweet that started the furore has since been deleted.

The level of anger at the messages, which were sent on Saturday evening from the firm’s official Twitter feed, stems from the bruising experiences dozens of families have had at the hands of Baker Small when trying to get local authority funding for vital SEN support for their children.



Baker Small is the most prominent law firm in this niche area, and its success rests on its ability to help cash-strapped local authorities cut the costs of SEN provision. As well as being contracted to fight cases at tribunal, it is also paid to provide training courses for council officials, offering strategies on managing and ending specialist provision for children with disabilities.

Jane McCready, founder of the ABA Access for All support group, said Small was known among parents as “the Terminator” because of his reputation for aggressively fighting to deny or end funding for service. In a now-deleted page on the firm’s website, Small advertised his skills at helping councils cut costs, stating that he had “experience of advising local authority SEN departments on a range of matters including managing and terminating ABA programmes [and] parental complaints”.

Cambridgeshire county council said it would not be referring new cases to Baker Small after the “inappropriate messages” on social media. Norfolk county council, which has spent around £120,000 instructing the firm in the past year, also said it was cutting ties, stating: “While we have noted Baker Small’s apology on this matter, our view is that tweets posted over the weekend were wholly inappropriate and do not in any way reflect how this council wishes to work with families.” Buckinghamshire said it had suspended its current arrangements with the firm.



Westminster, Hammersmith and Fulham, Kensington and Chelsea, and Hertfordshire also made a commitment to stop working with the firm, and Gloucestershire said it was considering what to do about the firm’s contract. Barnet council said it had an ongoing contract worth £45,000 with the firm, but expressed disappointment at the tweets and said it had “no current plans to use Baker Small for any further cases”.

Before councils began to review their relationship with the firm, Baker Small was estimated to hold contracts with local authorities worth up to £1m.

Baker Small tweets, which have since been deleted.

Small said he was “deeply, deeply sorry” for his comments, and conceded that, “from a publicity point of view, it is a disaster”. He said any work the firm lost with local authorities would be replaced by work representing parents against the councils.



He acknowledged that his firm had built its success on its ability to help councils reduce costs, and accepted that it had a reputation for the robust nature of its dealings with parents.

“I take the point about the manner and perhaps style of that representation, but we have never been reprimanded,” he said. “I’m certainly not saying that these are nice hearings, and I am sure that they are not good for anybody.”

He said the system from which his firm has made money needed reform, adding: “It is a nasty little system, the SEN system. It pitches professionals against professionals, schools against parents, in quite adversarial proceedings. When it goes wrong, the process that is there to solve it is not fit for purpose – the tribunal system.”

The row over Baker Small’s behaviour touches on the much deeper issue of the increasingly adversarial nature of local authority tribunals over the amount of support for which councils are willing to pay. There is wide resentment from parents who are forced to pay for expensive legal representative to appeal against councils’ decisions.

SOS!SEN, a charity that supports parents of children with SEN, said in a statement: “Parents of children with SEN already have more than enough on their plates without having to fight with the councils whose job it is to help them in order to secure adequate support; when that is exacerbated by aggressive and litigious tribunal tactics, the pressure on families can become near-unbearable.”

Herts Parents Carer Involvement, a SEN support group, said parents who had encountered Baker Small when the firm represented Hertfordshire county council had found that this “confrontational, aggressive, disrespectful attitude to parents is commonplace”.

“Parents are not legal experts, and challenging through the courts to get their child’s needs met is a hugely difficult and emotionally draining experience for parents who are often already at full stretch simply caring for their disabled children,” the group said in a statement.

The mother of a seven-year-old with SEN, who asked not to be named to protect the identity of her son, and who faced Baker Small in tribunal earlier this year, said the local authority conceded the day before the hearing, “by which time our lives had been all but ruined for a year with the stress and cost of having to fight through lawyers because of the aggressive nature of this lawyer”.

Shadow children’s minister Sharon Hodgson said the Baker Small row highlighted the need for a reformed, less adversarial system.

The incident “encapsulates the current predicament facing families and local authorities. Local authorities facing devastating cuts to their budgets are finding it increasingly difficult to meet the needs of local children. They are using strong-arm tactics by law firms to help win cases to bring down costs, which at the end of the day can be detrimental to the future of the children involved,” she said.