What happened
Twin brothers with severe autism started at a special school aged four, with a plan that they would stay until nineteen. The school used “Hardrock” chairs: wheeled chairs with straps and a tray, used to hold them in place.
At a school concert in 2010, per Leigh Day, their parents watched the boys wheeled onto the stage strapped into the chairs. Told it was the only way they could take part, and that it was a one-off, they objected. A year later a visiting clinical psychologist saw one of them strapped into a chair in class. At a sports day one sat strapped in, distressed, while others ran outside. The parents later removed both boys and home-schooled them.
The outcome
The parents brought a claim under the Human Rights Act 1998 against the county council that ran the school.
The council admitted multiple failings: the straps and tray restricted movement and amounted to mechanical restraint; their use should have been agreed with parents and set out in a care plan; they were used without that agreement, in breach of school policy and Department for Education guidance; and the school failed to consider less restrictive options or plan to reduce the restraint.
Per Leigh Day’s press release of 25 March 2022, a court hearing approved £80,000, £40,000 for each boy, and the council apologised.
What went wrong
Four failures, each a system failure.
The device was never classified. Equipment that restricts a child’s movement was in routine use and nobody had decided it was restraint, which emptied out everything that followed.
There was no care plan and no alternatives considered: the parents’ agreement was never sought, nothing agreed was recorded, and the school could not show it had tried anything less restrictive.
Nothing was monitored: no register, no review, no reduction plan, which is why the practice continued for years after two objections. “It was a one-off” was said to parents who could see it was not.
What it teaches
Mechanical restraint does not have to look violent. If it restricts movement it is restraint, whatever the catalogue calls it. Staff who would never say they restrain a child can be doing it with equipment they treat as furniture.
Classification decides everything downstream. A practice not recorded as restraint is not planned, agreed, monitored or reduced. The failure here was not the chair; it was never putting the chair where the controls live.
A care plan is what lets a parent refuse, and a register is what turns two complaints into a pattern. The parents held no records at all.
Questions for the room
- What equipment in your school restricts a pupil’s movement: chairs, straps, trays, weighted items, lap belts? Who classified it, and where is that written down?
- If a parent told you a device was a one-off and it was not, what in your systems would show the pattern?
- For the pupil restrained most often, what is the written plan to reduce it, and when was it last reviewed?
Evidence and limits
Confidence: confirmed. Leigh Day’s release and Local Government Lawyer’s report of 30 March 2022 were read live on 7 November 2026; both carry the settlement and the admissions.
The boys are not named here: they were children, and naming the school or the council would identify them from the public reporting, so the page says a special school and a county council in the south east. No staff member is named; no prosecution is recorded in the sources read. The case ended in admissions and a settlement, not a trial judgment, so there is no judicial finding on the facts. The concert, the psychologist’s visit and the sports day come from Leigh Day’s account.
Our positive handling training for schools treats restricting equipment as restraint, with the planning that follows.
Sources
- Leigh Day, 25 March 2022 · https://www.leighday.co.uk/news/press-releases/2022-news/special-school-apologises-for-use-of-mechanical-restraint-against-severely-autistic-twin-boys/
- Local Government Lawyer, 30 March 2022 · https://www.localgovernmentlawyer.co.uk/litigation-and-enforcement/400-litigation-news/50062-twins-forced-into-mechanical-restraint-chairs-at-school-awarded-80k-compensation-by-council
Reviewed 7 November 2026.