Appeal advice

It just says they will use the info to assess commitment in terms of time and involvement

That is not good enough. The Admissions Code is clear that must be able to easily understand how faith criteria will be reasonably satisfied. This does not appear to meet that requirement.

I am examining the school admissions code and I am going to challenge the waiting list

There is no easy way to do this. If you appeal the panel can only decide whether or not to admit your son. They cannot change his position on the waiting list. You can challenge the school's admission arrangements through the Schools Adjudicator but that will take time. Even if the Adjudicator agreed with you, they wouldn't change the order of the waiting list. They would simply tell the school that their current admission arrangements are in breach of the Admissions Code and that they must change them.

It's typically baptism and attendance.

Other things (unfortunately for OP that means most of the things on her list of her church activities) are not allowed to be counted (because having the time to do more for the church is more closely related to (and exclusionary of) specific demographics than straightforward attendance.

So when OP says she attends regularly for longer than the minimum period, that sounds good. But if regularly is once a month, and the faith criteria specifies fortnightly, then she might not qualify for the higher-ranked criteria

Feel is definitely not an admission criteria when it comes to faith. There is an official document that explains how they will carry out the admission process and the full details of the admission criteria. That is the booklet put out by the LA every year and is based on the school confirming that this is the process. If they are not following that for the initial places or any places that are subsequently offered then that is incorrect and needs to be sorted out.
I have a feeling about this from your posts and that is that there is something wrong here. What is wrong I cannot tell you without seeing far more detail, which I accept that you do not want to put on the open site. But you can PM me if you want.

Most faith schools will define what they regard as 'regular church attendance' in their admissions policy. It might stipulate a list of churches that are given priority, for example local CofE, followed by churches of other denominations. Some say at least once a month for the two years up to the application date is regular, others say twice a month, and a form signed by the Vicar to support this is required. Many churches ask families to sign a register these days.

To say it's been decided on 'feel' is peculiar and absolutely subjective and possibly sound grounds for an appeal to be upheld because the admissions policy is unclear.

OP, if you were to PM one of the experts the name and location of the school, I'm sure they would look at the criteria for you.

I can't imagine that the church criteria in the schools admission policy stated "on feel" so perhaps that it itself is grounds for appeal.

Admission to a school surely can't be on "feel". Criteria have to be clearly stated & adhered to.

They apparently have assessed church places on feel

That doesn't sound very objective !!

A few thoughts ...

You haven't said where the sibling category fits in the oversubscription criteria. As Admission has said, it would be very difficult - in a secondary school where siblings are near the top of the admissions categories - for the school to run out of places before all siblings had got a place.

Your latest post seems to imply that you have not been considered under the church affiliation category and that the sibling category in which you've been placed is lower in the admissions categories. Is that so? It does sometimes happen that siblings are separated into two categories - siblings/church affiliation and then siblings/other, either directly beneath that category or with other church affiliation applications in between.

I understand you don't want to answer publicly, but you need to unravel what has happened, especially how regular church attendance is measured - this should be spelt out somewhere - and how and why you were deemed not to fulfil that criterion.

One last thing: "They can't argue it is detrimental to the school to add additional children as they did that themselves in their bulge year." It doesn't quite work like that. A bulge class is just that, a bulge class. What you would be asking at an appeal is for the school to take your child as (say) the 31st child in a classroom designed for 30. Of course, the bulge class does help you counter any arguments about the negative effects of overcrowding in (eg) the canteen, but that will leave questions about whether there will be enough workstations in the science lab or whatever. You can still argue that the prejudice to your child in not having a place at the school outweighs any prejudice to the school there.

What admission category were you in? It sounds as if you might not have been either sibling or church - did you fill in an extra form for the church criteria?

The criteria should be clear, whether weekly, monthly or whatever.

You do need to look carefully at whether there is a sibling link or not in the 2017 admission criteria. If there is then you would be expected to have a level of priority from that and in a secondary school it is unlikely that there were more sibling applications than places.
If there is no sibling criteria then presumably from your posts it is a straight forward lottery and so you have the same chance of being offered a place as anybody else. When it comes to filling places again via a lottery then they should be carrying out a new draw for each time places become available.
Does the letter saying that you were not offered a place not say which admission criteria you were in and why you did not get an offer of a place? It should do.
If you want to PM me with a school name and LA I will check what exactly the admission criteria is for this year to at least give you piece of mind that no mistake has been made.

They did a consultantion to change admission criteria in 2018 and it looks like they applied this to 2017 admissions

Are you sure? Consultations for the admission arrangements for 2018 happened between 1st October 2016 and 31st January 2017. If they have applied those criteria to admissions for 2017 that is a clear error. It will, however, be a nightmare for an appeal panel to sort out as there may be a large number of pupils disadvantaged by this.

b. They did a consultantion to change admission criteria in 2018 and it looks like they applied this to 2017 admissions

I think if this is the case, it sounds like they haven't followed the published admissions policy for 2017, and if your DC missed out on a place because if an error, an appeal on these grounds has a good chance of being upheld.

Families with both faith criteria and siblings usually have pretty high priority, is it distance that's the issue here?

As part of the appeal, I'd recommend paying attention to the reasons the school says it's full and can't go over PAN.

For example, if they say they have to take pupils off site for PE lessons, question why this may be the case; I discovered that the school was referring to swimming lessons in our case...therefore not a legitimate issue caused by overcrowding, simply the fact that the school doesn't have an on-site pool.

If they say that admitting more children would result in crowed corridors, ask them how many reports they have of incidents in the corridors caused by overcrowding in the past 12 months.

Can you say anything more about why, as a sibling, your child did not get a place? Are you saying that even the sibling category (which is usually near the top of the oversubscription criteria) was oversubscribed? Or is this a school that distinguishes between in catchment and out of catchment siblings and you're out of catchment?

What do you mean about specific disadvantage to rural areas? Is there compelling evidence here that the oversubscription are unreasonable in the legal sense that no rational person would think them acceptable?

Once you dont get in they seem to do a lottery on church places

They should use exactly the same method they use for normal admissions. If they used a lottery to decide who got offers this week they should continue to use a lottery for the waiting list. If they used distance they should continue to use distance. They can't switch methods.

It must be a very popular school if you meet both the faith criteria and the sibling one (assuming there is sibling priority?) and still didn't get a space. On what basis did you lost out on a place - distance? Do you know the distance from school of the last place offered? Is there likely to be movement on the waiting list?