School application from rented address - nothing council can do?

Well everyone uses their financial advantage to get their kids a good school place. It's just that some can afford to move permanently to a good catchment area.

If you think councils have the resources or motivation to conduct the number or type of checks and investigations some people seem to be implying, you are way off the mark.

The fact that they CAN remove a child's school place after they have started, doesn't mean that they often DO

It is becoming increasingly common. No statistics are published by the information available suggests that a significant number of pupils lose their places each year after they have started at a school due to it becoming apparent that the application was fraudulent or misleading applications. A much higher number are caught before they get to that point, often before any offer is made. In that case the LA will use the real address for the application. In some cases the parents will still end up with a place at their preferred school and will think renting has paid off when in fact it had nothing to do with it.

The longer the child has been in that school, the less likely they are to remove their place

That is true. The Admissions Code says that the length of time the child has been at the school must be taken into account before deciding whether or not to remove the place. Some LAs will only remove the place if the child has been at the school for one term or less but some will remove the place even if the child has been there much longer.

Prime,

But the point is that the LA doesn't have to investigate every family. A few common sense filters can cut the job down to an entirely manageable size:

1. The school. Not every school is affected equally, and the problem will be concentrated around certain 'honeypot' schools, so the council can focus on applications to these schools.

1. Length of time at address. The council is looking at MOVES. So by filtering 'council tax payers which have changed over the previous 12 months', say, then the list is automatically much shorter.

1. Known properties: As the council gets better at this process, their workload can decrease, because if they know that rental Property X was used for an application that they threw out last year, a similar application this year can be rejected very easily.

1. Pro-active use of other information: primary schools within a honeypot catchment will know a) the 'habitual home address' of Y5 / Y6 children to date and b) any 'interesting' changes of address within those key year groups. This can be used as a cross-check for information supplied as part of a secondary application.

All these will throw up a 'shortlist' of potential families to request further information from. And it is very clear where the burden of proof lies - it is not with the LA to prove that the address is being used fraudulently, as they can simply deem an address not suitable to be used as the child's permanent home address for the purpose of schools admissions. Instead, the burden of proof is with the parent, to prove that the address is legitimate.

The LA knows who owns every property in their area. They need that information for Council Tax purposes.
No it really isn't that straight forward. The Council tax register is not the same information as the Land Registry. The person registered to pay Council Tax is not always the same person as the property owner.
If the LA search the land registry for "John Smith", they might get dozens of results. They would have no way of knowing if any of them were the same John Smith, father of Tim Smith who has applied for a place at a school. The school application could have the father down as "Jonathon Smith"
I (perfectly legally) use 2 different names. The name I put on my child's school application is not the same as the name on the Land Registry.
If you own a home in a neighbouring LA to the school you are applying to and the home you are renting, they can't even check the council tax register.

The workload involved in searching every application would be impossible to manage so they don't check routinely. They will investigate some applications but if the parents stick to their guns and insist that they have separated, as long as they keep that rented place for at least a year, then there is nothing that the LA can do. They have limited resources and they can't just spend endless money investigating a family.

It really comes down to how long the parent stays at the rented address. There was a time when 6 months was enough to apply and get the school place offer, now you need to stay for a year as the change of address within a year is likely to trigger an investigation.

The fact that they CAN remove a child's school place after they have started, doesn't mean that they often DO. The longer the child has been in that school, the less likely they are to remove their place - although they can remove the future sibling priority.

I'm in London and I know at least a dozen families that have rented while keeping their old home in order to gain an admission to a primary or secondary. Often claiming that their old house was having renovations or whatever.

I know of no family that have specifically bought and sold a house just to gain a place at a school. The stamp duty alone would be more than the cost of private secondary education. I do know of lots of people who have been looking to move anyway, usually to a bigger house as their family has grown , who have specifically taken into account the last distance for a favoured secondary (eg Fortismere) when buying, but I can't see how they can be criticised for this. And then at least they're living locally for the duration.

Renting is a far more widespread ruse. I'm with all other posters who are laughing at the idea that stealing places by renting is somehow an ethical crusade.

So its ok for a millionaire to buy a house and live in it with the sole intention of getting DC into a school, then six months later selling it and moving away

As Tiggytape says, this is within the rules as they stand. This is why there is a trend towards admission arrangements that avoid giving sibling priority to families that behave in this way.

The only people using money to get school places unfairly are those in the financial position to own a home and rent an additional one on top

Very true. The people who do this like to justify their actions as poor people getting one over on the rich. In fact they are well off and by their actions are generally depriving a poorer family of a school place that is rightfully theirs.

I know one family who "separated" during the admissions period. Dad stayed in the family home, mum moved out to a rented home with the kids.
Fortunately they were able to resolve their differences and get back together after their child had settled in school

Many LAs are wise to that ruse and would remove the child's place in that situation.

And I don't believe it is that straight forward for LAs to even search for this information. They can't just search the land registry for the names of every parent

The LA knows who owns every property in their area. They need that information for Council Tax purposes. It is very straightforward for them to find out if you own another property in their area. And if you apply from an address that is regularly used by people trying to flout the rules or there is some other reason to be suspicious the council may conduct a more detailed investigation to make sure you don't own a property in an adjoining LA's area.

The most oversubscribed counties now expressly ban this eg they say if you own a home and rent another, the rented one won't count no matter which one you physically reside in (unless there's good reason - burnt to the ground etc)
I know one family who "separated" during the admissions period. Dad stayed in the family home, mum moved out to a rented home with the kids.
Fortunately they were able to resolve their differences and get back together after their child had settled in school.

And I don't believe it is that straight forward for LAs to even search for this information. They can't just search the land registry for the names of every parent.

So its ok for a millionaire to buy a house and live in it with the sole intention of getting DC into a school, then six months later selling it and moving away.

But its not ok for a middle class family to rent a flat and live in it with the sole intention of getting DC into a school, then six months later moving away.

What a bunch of hypocrites.

How are faith admissions the biggest problem? Yes I know that a lot of you don't agree with schools that admit children of a particular faith first before non faith children, but it's been likes this for years and it isn't going to change.

We own a small flat with no garden and a family house is upwards of 1.4 million near any decent school. We're currently out of catchment as every school near us has a catchment of 0.1 miles and we're 0.2 from nearest school. We're going to rent out our flat and use the income to pay a substantial amount of rent within a catchment long-term. The reason we can't buy is because bankers etc have bought up all the property. Why should they get the decent schools because they can afford a 1.4 million pound house when my family has lived in this area for generations? We don't want to get off the property ladder completely. I'd be highly surprised if any council banned school applications from renters who own nearby but instead use the records to make sure the address is not short-term. Frankly I hope they wouldn't waste public money like that.

Why do you have so much time on your hands? You need to take up a hobby.

There is a difference between renting a small flat and 'pretending' the family live there and moving house in order to be in catchment (renting it or otherwise). I see why you are annoyed but in reality it would be so hard to police and stopping house moving would often catch lots of innocent people too, like those who own a flat but rent it out so they can live in a house, or who move for work or who can't afford their mortgage so are renting it out and renting somewhere cheaper...its endless. Mostly though, people do try and go by the spirit of the rules.

the point is though that they have actually moved in.that is there abode they are not pretending to live there.

They do give you the chance to explain but if you have no compelling reason, they won't let you use the rented address.

But everyone is going to make up a compelling reason though aren't they - 'To be nearer to Auntie Jean who is not so well' Who decides what a compelling reason is? Because if the LEA make the wrong decision then they will have to find another place.Also the idea that the council has time to scour the land registry for mentions of parentsof tens of thousands of applicants is ludicrous! besides the house could be in the name of one parent and the application made in the name of the other, or a parent could slightly change their name on the admissions form.
And what about renters moving short term to get into catchment- how are you going to catch them?

Yes Alltouchedout, I have visions of Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King and Gandhi all sharing a rented flat next door to Coleridge School/Eleanor Palmer/Camden Girls as a way of socking it to the man.

Of course the admissions system is a mess and frankly faith admissions are the biggest problem. However, I don't see how anyone can think it's someone crusading and moral to rent a flat next door to a school for 6 months before moving back into your old place. The people (in my experience) who seem to lose the places where this happens a lot are usually the ones in social housing. It also increases the clusters of involved parents in certain schools and increases the clusters of less involved families in others which goes a fair way to explaining why some schools have the better results that attract this behaviour in the first place.

I love the way some pp have tried to make this a sjw thing and imply that not denouncing people who play the system in this way is being on the side of the poor Trust me, poor families aren't the ones doing this. Poor families can't stump up the associated costs of a move (fees, deposits, etc). They can't pay the inflated rental prices associated with the areas that secure 'good' school places.

For those deliberately misunderstanding, the OP is talking about a situation where a family has not moved 'fair and square' to a new permanent address, but let out their permanent home and rented a temporary home in order to secure a school place their child would not otherwise be entitled to. They are doing it solely to get the school place. They intend to return to their permanent home once the child has a place and to repeat the trick again when they need to secure their other child's place.

My children have to go to a primary school that is around 3 miles from home and it generally takes us 45 minutes on a crowded bus to get there. I have just checked on our council's website and there are thirty two primary schools closer to our house. There are eleven within a mile of our house. If I found out that the reason we couldn't get into a local school was that someone had decided that it was perfectly OK to do the above and scam a place for their child I would be fucking incandescent and damn right I would shop them.

Just want to say that I can see the point about the unfairness of price driven catchment areas*, but the Nelson Mandela comparison is a bit much.

• disclaimer: although in our personal experience, such rent-and-move-back tactics are most popular with people who were fairly well off in the first with place, so not sure how strongly the point holds really