Renting in school catchment area temporarily

[3weeksuntilwine]

I’m prepared to be told I’m unreasonable and potentially planning something illegal...

We live on the catchment boundary of a really good primary school and my DD is due to start reception in September 2019. We are currently looking at houses and hoping to move a couple of miles to get into the catchment completely but there’s nothing on the market at the moment and we haven’t sold our house. I’m aware the application process will start in autumn.

Would it be unreasonable to rent a flat for a few months in the catchment area from September 18 and use the rental address on the application? The dodgy bit is that we would continue to live where we are now. My crazy thought is that we’d have a short term lease and if we still haven’t sold/moved then stay in current house until something comes up...(so keep the rental for a few months only)

I know this sounds crazy but we also have two younger kids who would be going to school a couple of years later. If we didn’t get into this school, we would have to consider a fee paying school for the eldest as other schools locally aren’t great. The big cost outlay now would be far cheaper than sending all three to private school.

Am I considering a fraudulent act?
Has anyone done anything similar?
If the majority agree this is an ok plan, are there any flaws in it?
Tia

allinclusive that was lucky! I think moving into rented may be the way to go if we sell our house until something suitable turns up. Market is quite slow at the mo around here.

I'm pretty sure you wouldn't get away with this, as schools check if you own another property locally. If you have not disposed of your property, or have a bona fide reason why you can't live there (eg uninhabitable due to fire damage), then the local authority would ask you to apply with your bought property address, and you could face criminal charges.

I'e got no idea if this is legal or not but I also cannot see why anyone would have a problem with it. Why should your kids not go to a nice school? If the state ran all state schools well it would not be a problem... oh wait, they offloaded it all to academies....

Just check out the legal side (anonymously if you can) before you do anything.

It is illegal and where I live, being in the catchment area means nothing. My DD wasn't given a place at our nearest primary or secondary school. It's not worth it.

Yes, better to sell your house and rent for a while than rush into buying a house that you don't love. Or "commit fraud" and risk the wrath of mumsnet.

Blimey, poor OP! parents naturally want their child to attend a good school, that's why it's the focus of so many people. It would be unusual not to. Sadly the catchment system means many can't buy in good catchments which leads people to do this or pretend to be religious etc. As others have said the latter seems very common!

Horrible and selfish. Damaging communities (revolving door homes, no continuity) and pricing others out.

at folk saying you're committing fraud. Hardly.

I do think it's likely though that you'd be found out and your plan rumbled. Can you buying a cheaper house in the catchment area? Or accept the place at the mediocre school with the view to moving your children at some point?

The chances of it working are very low. You wouldn't need someone to 'tell' on you - the council's have inbuilt checks for seeing when people have moved and paid council tax etc and especially look hard at renters who rent within commutable distance to their owned or previous house. Every year, people lose their school places because of it.

There is the further question of whether you are prepared to do something which prevents a person who permanantly lives in an area getting a place in a school, whilst you try to scam the system. It's the same with temporary Church attendance......you might get away with it. But is the only thing you are interested in, if you can get away with it? Is there zero concern for the effect this has on another family who might have lived there for years....or because you dont know them, do you feel you don't need to give any thought to them at all?

Perhaps you are the kind of person who only thinks about themselves and their own family and getting what they want is so much more important than anyone else who might be trodden on along the way. There are people who are like this and who will do the treading on and not care at all, of they think they will get away with it. Some people on this thread openly admit they would do it - they rarely refer to the impact on other people, because they block that out because it's a bit unpalatable....and they justify it because the people are not people they know, so the impact dp seems somehow distanced and irrelevant.

Op, I would say, there is time to sell and buy elsewhere. Get on with doing that. And if you can't, then rent, but actually live there and sell your house and when somewhere else comes up, then buy. This is all perfectly above board and fine. It isn't acceptable to rent just for the address and not to live there.

Why not just apply anyway from where you are? If she doesn't get in, put her on the waiting list. The reception class of the other school will be fine for a short time while you are waiting. You may even find it has some things you like about it.

The reason people would have a problem with it, ItalianGreyhound, is that if op got a school place in a catchment she doesn't live in; a child that does live there misses out.
Could you really not have a stab at working that out?

It is fraud - check the law

Round here the council admissions team actually doorstep suspicious applicants to check that they are living at said address. Are you prepared to move into it?

If you own a property they take that as your main residence.

It's not crazy. It's the oldest trick in the book.

In my area I'd be the one investigating you! Yabu, even if your application is accepted initially some disgruntled parent who didn't get in will rat you out to the LA as soon as offers are announced!

Most councils do have very specific wording to avoid this type of thing:

One example:

"A child’s home address is defined as ‘a child’s ordinary place of residence, which is deemed to be the residential property at which the child normally and habitually resides with their parent or legal guardian......

Addresses of a business, relative, friend or child-minder will not be considered as the home address even when the child stays there for all or part of the week. We may seek proof of residence and may require evidence from courts regarding parental responsibilities in these matters. Evidence that a child’s home
address is permanent may also be sought. Such evidence should demonstrate that the child lived at the address before the application was made and will continue to live there after the time of admission. "

There are folk takes circulating about rental properties being successfully used in the past, but IME it has become MUCH tighter. Checks of current correspondence address with the child's primary school, and with the secondary when the child is admitted are pretty commonplace, as are home visits, and removals from schools up to the Christmas of their first year though tbh I think the majority are now detected at the application stage through council tax records etc.

fake church attending is probably much more common yet not seen as fraudulent
It might be morally wrong, but it's not fake attending when people attend church. If you were moving into your rental property, it wouldn't be "fake renting" either.

The problem with people like you OP, is that they rent temporarily to put one kid in a school then MOVE. So your child lives too far from the school, you took the place from a local family who then has to struggle and travel miles to another school - classes are 30 pupils max here, so when school is full, it's full. You then expect siblings to get a place too. Some councils have now stopped giving priorities to siblings for exactly that reason, and rightly so.

If you are that desperate, move to rental. Unfortunately you are then likely to buy out of catchment - because it's cheaper, and you get more for your money - and you screw the system. Your kid might also be refused a place because someone else did the same thing but moved 2 or 3 houses closer.

I did buy a house in the right catchment, and only bought because of the catchment frankly, so I understand the theory, but "fake renting" is a step too far.

There are genuine rules about moving into the catchment during the application time (sept to sept) so why don’t you check those out as to what your (legal) options are - councils can be helpful at telling you what you can and can’t do

That should read it's not 'crazy' or a brainwave or anything other than obvious.

It is definitely fraud and you will be caught by the LA if you are not living at the address.

You could rent a house and actually LIVE there, if you didn't want to sell your current house then let it out. Or just rent while you put your house on the market and look for another to buy in the area. But you have to live in the catchment area or you are breaking the law.

Fake church attending would also be fraud - but people don’t do this usually - they actually attend (registers etc are taken for years) so it’s not ‘fake’ attending is it

you're committing fraud

Fraud - wrongful or criminal deception intended to result in financial or personal gain.

Can you explain why it is NOT fraud to obtain a school place that is rightfully someone else's through deliberate deception? Deception with the intention of taking a 'better' school place than it is your right to have is surely very accurately described as fraud?

Amazing how some people seem to have no awareness of impact of their actions on others .....or can be so detached and selfish as to not care at all about it.

It's one thing to say everyone wants a good school for their child....but it's a big leap to say, that they will achieve that by breaking the rules and pushing another family out by their actions.

And I don't like it when people try to justify such behaviour and rule breaking by saying the system is unfair so that justifies the actions. You might not like the fact that some schools have Church criteria for priority, or some schools are near to affluent areas that you can't afford, or some people can afford private schools, or whatever it is.....these dislikes don't justify treading on other families and preventing them from having a place. People who try to use this kind of justification not only seem to lack rational thought, but to be even more selfish in deluding themselves that this somehow justifies their breaking the rules and particularly trading on other people - the second part of which is rarely even recognised.

Why should your kids not go to a nice school?

So only the kids of parents who are (a) wealthy enough to have 2 properties on the go and (b) willing to commit fraud should get to go to a nice school? Fuck the kids of poor and honest people eh?

Shitty attitude.

Church attendance for the purpose of attending a specific school is not fraud by this definition (though that doesn't mean it should have any place in school admissions in modern Britain).

The admissions criteria are written around church attendance. If you attend church as prescribed, you will get an advantage in admissions, but it is not fraudulent as it is not deception - you did attend.