Moving house and admissions

[EggyMcEggMcSandwich]

Hello, some advice please. We are moving house soon and am rather confused!

Our DS starts reception in September and we had to apply for schools near our current home. We are desperate for him to go to our first choice, which is over subscribed. Our new home is still within the priority catchment area of our first choice, however it is slightly further away from the school. Our LEA states that a change of address notified after 12/02/12 cannot definately be taken into account. If we notify the LEA of our change of address after completion will they treat us as a late application, even though we remain in the same area? Or will they allocate DS a place based on our old house?

Many thanks in advance.

Not sure I completely follow your post, but I know of someone who placed their first choice based upon the catchment of their new address, however they were not granted it as the school was oversubsribed. They did appeal but that failed and their child is currently out of the system

sorry, to clarify - our first choice school is the closest school to both our current house and the newhouse, both houses are in the school's priority catchment area.

Every LA has a procedure for handling such situations and you do need to confirm with the LA what theirs is. However from what you have said it appears that your LA is operating a fairly standard system.
Assuming that you applied before the normal cut off date, then your application form will be considered on time. The 12th Feb date is to allow for parents who have moved house and want to change their preferences to do so. In your circumstances you need to inform the LA that you have changed address as of a specific date but that you do not wish to make any changes to the application for places. The information of change of address is solely for administration purposes so that the LA send the school allocation letter to the correct address.
If you did want to change anything in the preferences then you would after the 12th FEb be considered a late application and will go to the end of the list as far as allocations for schools, so do not under any circumstances do this.
I would also for your own protection having spoken to the LA confirm by email that you are informing them of an address change but no changes to the preferences form. Occasionally mistakes do happen when it is all done on the telephone.

Thanks Admission. As the 12th Feb has passed will the LEA base our application on our old address? It's an oversubscribed school so they use the 'straight line distance' rule.

yes that is correct they will use the original address.

In our local area, if you were applying for some of the very oversubscribed schools (for which fraudulent / misleading applications are a well-documented issue) then your original address would be used BUT a house move at this point to a house further away from the school would be investigated as 'potentially suspicious' (in fact, any move up to about Christmas of the first year can be investigated).

If, for example, you were moving back to a permanent address having had a short period (spanning the application window) at an address close to the school then you would be asked some very searching questions. However a house move clearly documented as genuine wouldn't be a problem, though you might well have to supply extra information to show that.

It may not happen for you. Just don't panic if requests arrive for extra paperwork about the move!