What happened
C is severely autistic, has severe learning difficulties and complex needs, and his behaviour included extreme challenge and self-injury. On 21 May 2007, at the age of fourteen, he moved to a residential special school for pupils with severe learning difficulties.
The school used a Crisis Prevention Institute system: two-staff “transport position” holds, “seated transport” on the bus, and seclusion in the “blue room”, a padded room 10 feet square whose door could not be locked but was held shut from outside.
His use of that room increased sharply in the years before the proceedings, despite behaviour support plans. The Official Solicitor brought judicial review and Court of Protection proceedings. Ryder J heard five days of evidence in January and February 2011 and gave judgment on 30 March 2011.
The outcome
The court made detailed declarations and orders under the Mental Capacity Act 2005 governing C’s placement and seclusion. His liberty could be deprived only in limited circumstances, and only with the authority of the court.
For the room to be lawful and in C’s best interests, the judgment set conditions. Use had to comply with chapter 15 of the Mental Health Act 1983 Code of Practice and section 7 LASSA 1970 guidance, be the least restrictive option, and be proportionate and necessary. C had to be visible at all times. The room was never to be used for punishment, or solely because he was naked or self-injuring. It all had to sit in a protocol specific to C, with recording, internal review and independent multidisciplinary review.
No damages were awarded in this judgment.
What went wrong
The room and the holds had become routine practice without a legal footing. A school’s internal guidance is not authority to seclude a child, and it is not authority to hold him in a transport position.
The rise in the room’s use, against behaviour support plans, was the signal that the plan was not working. The restriction expanded to fill the gap.
The judge’s finding, as the record carries it, is blunt. “Urban myth and so called ‘common sense’ rather than expert advice and multi-disciplinary working practices continues to be influential in some residential settings.”
What it teaches
Seclusion and transport holds are restraint, whatever the setting calls them. The names matter because they decide which paperwork, which review and which safeguards apply. A room with a door held shut is a locked room.
Before either practice continues, someone has to show a protocol written for that child, visibility, a record, a review, and a reason why a less restrictive option would not do. Without that paper, the staff applying it have nothing to check against.
Questions for the room
- A door that cannot be locked but is held shut from outside: is that seclusion, and who decides?
- You are asked to sign off a behaviour plan that includes transport holds. What has to be in it before you would?
- When a room’s use rises sharply despite a behaviour plan, whose job is it to ask why?
Evidence and limits
Confidence: probable. The record states that the judgment was opened in full, but the pack’s only source, the BAILII page, returned an anti-scraping block with no text, and no second independent source was opened. Everything here rests on the record’s summary, findings and outcome fields. The wording of the judgment, including the passage quoted, was not checked against the text.
A court order anonymises the local authority, the school and C. They stay anonymous here: no name, no school, no area. Nothing here identifies where C was placed.
Our work with schools on restraint reduction training covers seclusion, transport holds and the protocol a setting needs before either is used.
Sources
- BAILII, C v A Local Authority [2011] EWHC 1539 (Admin), 30 March 2011 · https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Admin/2011/1539.html
Reviewed 20 October 2026.