address of convenience

You can go on a waiting list, but in the priority order based on your owned house.

It sounds like exactly the sort of situation the rules are designed to prevent.
E.g. family wants school A but isn't in catchment so they rent their owned house out, move into rented during the admissions window and then probably move back into their original house after. It's renting a house for the purpose of school admissions.

Someone moving 200 miles away wouldn't be deemed an address of convenience because it's not convenient and there's no danger of them getting the place and then playing games.

I'm not sure what you think a court would say that's different to the replies on here to be honest.

If you sell your property, then the property you are now renting will become your application address and thus you should go up the waiting list for the local school. They will not backdate it and give you your place back but it should increase your chances of a waiting list place.

The only way now to get the place is to win an appeal; to persuade an appeals panel that you have genuinely moved, and the rental address is and was your child's habitual residence at the time of application.

The LA do not have to prove anything, they can decide on the balance of probabilities that you have used an address of convenience. It will be up to the appeals panel to decide if they were correct or not.

Going to court if you don't like the appeal decision is extremely unlikely to work and would just be expensive and time consuming.

I would concentrate on selling the house and getting yourself up local waiting lists.

You can appeal to other local schools too, on the grounds of balance of prejudice of course.

You would be taking them to Court for following their own rules. It would be a massive waste of your time and effort.

You said earlier "but they are offering other schools in this area which is 10 miles away!" Do you understand what's happened there?

They've taken away the place they believe you got by deception and have then considered your child on distance from your old house and have presumably given the child a place at which ever school had places. Even if you sell your old house and stay in your rented place you might move up the waiting list and get a place at some point but only if people leave.

If you go on the waiting list, which you can, you will be very near the bottom as they'll use your out of area address.

Your only chance is to convince the appeal panel that you do genuinely want to stay in your rental area for years. And you need to be very calm and patient while you try to do that. Getting cross with people like you did with Teen won't help you at all. There's no point in complaining about the 'funny protocol'. All you've got is that you do want to live there and you went about it all wrong and you understand that. If they don't agree with you, you sit on the waiting list and you can appeal every September for the next 5 years to see if they change their mind.

No don't take them to court, you haven't a leg to stand on.
Save your money.

That's because you are still outwith the policy, as you still own the house. I find it hard to credit that you expected them to ignore their own policy because you wanted to keep breaching it for a bit longer.

It is not up to the LA to solve your problem that the qualifying address is so far away from the schools you applied for. You need to fix that, by disposing of the owned property

I can't imagine there are lots of genuine moves that include a last month move to rent very close to the preferred school and an owned property that is c20 miles away to be honest.

If you were moving 200 miles and rented at the last minute then the admissions policy would presumably take the view that the one property at over 200 miles away is 'not available to you' But the combination of late move and distance could lead to them thinking your owned property is "available to you"
What tenancy length is the owned home let out on?

I think your situation (renting near the desired school purely to gain admission) is exactly what the rules intend to stop. I don't think you have a leg to stand on, according to their clear rules, the address to be used for school admissions process is your owned home 22 miles away, which is what they have done. I'd advise that you appeal for a school near your owned home, and make arrangements to move back there asap.

Yes, this is an entirely normal policy, in line with the Admissions Code which has the force of law. Different LAs might use different criteria to decide which is an applicant's main address, but as long as the policy is readily available to applying families and the policy is not perverse (in a legal sense) then it will be enforced.

No, they do not have to prove that you will be returning.

Are you intending to build your appeal around the LAs policy being perverse?

Where did you live between June and October 2018 OP?

OK.

I have been asking questions to see if you explain a clear reason as to why you rented as you did that wasn't for school admissions.

So far you haven't, so the conclusion is you moved for school and you are trying to game the system.

If there is a reason why you rented when you did that wasn't for admission reasons, then that is what you have to explain to the panel.

Or, you just have to accept that they will use your owned home address. Then you will have to find other reasons to appeal, such as extra curricular activities or whatever.

But it does look suspicious OP - to move within 500m of school in the last month of admissions. How close was the nearest offer you received for the house?

October 18 would have been just a few weeks before the deadline. I’m not surprised they think you aren’t genuine. Did you supply any evidence at all of your move being genuine when you applied?

They aren't saying you aren't living there. They just think that like lots of people do each year, you've tried to make it look like you've moved but really next October you could be back in your owned house.

You moved into the rented house the month of the admission deadline. You can see why that would look suspicious, can't you?

You could have stayed in your old house and applied for a school closer to it.

They don't have to 'prove'. They use 'balance of probabilities'. Many people rent to get into a good school whilst keeping their own house. Easy to say 'it won't sell' by pricing it too high.