What happened
According to Leigh Day, the solicitors who brought the claim, twin brothers with severe autism, both non-verbal, started at Five Acre Wood special school in Maidstone in 2009, aged four. The school used “Hardrock” chairs, specialist seats with straps around the legs, arms and shoulders and a tray, to restrict their movement.
At a school concert the following year, when the boys were five, their parents saw them wheeled onto the stage strapped into the chairs. When they protested, they were told the chairs were the only way the boys could take part and that it was a one-off.
It was not. In June 2011 a clinical psychologist visiting the school saw one of the boys strapped into a Hardrock chair in the classroom. At a sports day, with other children outside running around, one of the twins was strapped into a chair and visibly distressed.
The parents continued to object and removed both boys in 2013, according to Leigh Day’s account. They home-schooled them afterwards.
The outcome
The parents brought a claim under the Human Rights Act 1998 against Kent County Council, which ran the school. The council admitted multiple failings and accepted liability. In March 2022 a court hearing approved a settlement of £80,000, with half for each boy, together with an apology.
The council said it “sincerely apologises for any harm, distress and/or pain and suffering” caused to the boys and their parents.
What went wrong
The admissions describe a system failure rather than a moment of panic.
The chairs were mechanical restraint. Their use should have been agreed with the parents and set out in a care plan. It was not: the restraint was used without parental agreement, in breach of the school’s own policy and Department for Education guidance.
The school did not consider less restrictive options or plan to reduce the use of the chairs. It also did not record, report or monitor the practice. That is why the parents learned the scale of it in fragments: a concert, a psychologist’s visit, a sports day. And when they challenged what they had seen, the school told them it was a one-off.
What it teaches
Mechanical restraint does not have to look violent to be unlawful. A chair with straps and a tray is restraint, and it needs the same justification as a hold: agreement, a plan, a reduction plan, monitoring and a record.
The absence of records is what let this run for four years.
Questions for the room
- A chair that stops a child moving is restraint. Why is it so often not treated as one in a classroom?
- You are the teacher who straps a child into the chair on sports day. What should have happened in the weeks before that morning?
- The school had no record, report or monitoring of the practice. What would a working record have shown, and to whom?
Evidence and limits
Confidence: confirmed. The admissions and the court-approved settlement are reported by the claimant solicitors and by the Daily Mirror. On the sum the accounts differ: the Mirror says more than £80,000, while the record gives £80,000, divided equally. The record’s figure is used here. The Local Government Lawyer report returned only a fragment of text and was not read.
The boys are not named on this page. They are children, and the case is about what the school did, so they are described by role and sector only. No member of staff is named. The admissions are the council’s, and they are not a finding against any individual.
Our restraint reduction training for schools covers mechanical restraint and the plans that have to sit around it.
Sources
Reviewed 20 October 2026.