Request a procedural review
How to request that Skills England review a decision-making process relating to a qualification, an occupational standard or an end-point assessment.
Applies to England
This guidance has been transferred from the previous skills body the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (IfATE) following its closure on 31 May 2025. The guidance is under review and may be subject to change.
Skills England will review our decision-making processes under certain circumstances. This is known as procedural review and is separate from our complaints procedure.
Only trailblazer groups and those organisations who have submitted applications for approval of a technical qualification can request procedural review. We will not accept requests brought by anyone else.
You can request procedural review if:
- we failed to follow our published processes and such failure could have led to a different decision
- we overlooked or misunderstood relevant information and if we hadn’t, this could have led to a different decision
- we considered irrelevant information and if we hadn’t, this could have led to a different decision
- we made a decision when we did not have the power to do so
You can only request procedural review in relation to a final decision by Skills England relating to a qualification, an occupational standard or an end-point assessment.
Requesting a procedural review
To request a procedural review, you need to email skills.england@education.gov.uk, explaining:
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why you think that something in the decision-making process went wrong
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why you think that this could have had an impact on our decision
You must email us within 10 working days of the final decision to let us know that you intend to seek a review.
We will send you a request form which you need to complete and send back. You should submit evidence supporting your request wherever possible.
You must email your completed request form and all relevant supporting evidence back to us within 25 working days of the final decision.
If you think you will be unable to meet these timeframes, please let us know as soon as possible and explain why an extension is needed. We will consider extension requests on a case-by-case basis.
After you request a procedural review
We will write to you acknowledging receipt of your completed form. We aim to do this within two working days of receiving your request form.
We aim to complete all reviews within 8 weeks of receiving your request form and all relevant supporting evidence. We will let you know if this is not going to be possible.
Eligibility criteria
The first stage in dealing with a procedural review request is to decide if it is eligible for review. When making the decision will consider whether:
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the request is submitted within the timeframes
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it is based on one or more of the eligible reasons
Even if those criteria are met we will not conduct a review if, after our initial assessment, we are satisfied that your request is clearly not capable of establishing that something went wrong in the decision-making process or that it could have impacted the outcome.
While considering the decision, we might seek advice from the Department for Education (DfE) legal team.
If your request is eligible, it will proceed to the review stage. If it is not eligible, we will decline it and we will write to you explaining the next steps.
Conducting the procedural review
If we agree to conduct a review, we will write to you to let you know that your request has been allocated to an independent reviewer.
An independent reviewer is a member of staff at Skills England who was not involved in the original decision. Their job is to investigate the specific issues raised in your procedural review request. If they identify any other important issues as part of their investigation, they will also explore these. They will then prepare a report which contains a recommendation on whether the procedural review request should be granted.
Once the report is complete, there will be a meeting of the procedural review panel. This is made up of 3 of Skills England’s senior leaders who were not involved in the original decision.
The panel will review your procedural review request, the independent reviewer’s report and recommendation, as well as any other relevant documents. They will then make a decision on whether your request (or parts of it) should be granted.
The panel will grant your procedural review request if they decide that it is more likely than not that something went wrong in the decision-making process and that this could have impacted the outcome.
Telling you about the outcome of your procedural review
If the panel decide that your procedural review request should be granted, you will be offered the opportunity to have the decision made afresh by someone not involved in the original decision.
If the panel decides not to grant your procedural review request we will write to you explaining why they reached that decision.
We aim to write to you within 7 working days of the panel meeting to let you know the outcome of your request. This represents the end of the review process.
We may share your completed procedural review request form and supporting evidence with DfE or Ofqual (or both) as part of the procedural review process or once it has been completed if we consider it necessary to do so.