Primary School appeal siblings' application withdrawn-experts advise please- you be the judge!

[Cratos]

We made a mistake with our application. A few years ago, when we applied for a reception place for our eldest, we made an application to two councils since we live very close to the Neighbor council and for work I need to travel to the Neighbor council. This helps with school runs. Out of catchment council accepted our application at the time. Happy story.
This year we applied again to get a place in the same school for our younger one. We also applied to our home council Just in case.
However, we didn't notice that the policy and process have changed since our last application. Apparently now we need to apply for our home council for all applications and they contact the Neighbor councils to let them know.
Two councils talked to each other about our application back in February and they decided to withdraw out of cathcment council application despite the sibling factor. They didn't call us to let us know or to ask us to repriotise our options.
If they did we could reapply in feb and perhaps fix the mistake.
We heard about this on the day of offer upon our call since we have not received any communication from them. We also learnt that the school accepted several out of catchment applications and we could definitely get a place.
Councils told us to appeal. The trouble is you can only appeal to schools who rejected your application. We also couldn't be on the waiting list since we have not applied to the school. In addition to this, the late application route didn't seem like an option since we already applied to home council and we have been offered a school.
After a lot of investigations, calls, letters and some negotiations, now we are a late applicant. However of course the chances are low. Needless to say we are devastated.
We will appeal since despite the mistake we made we feel that councils should have acted differently given the fact that there was a sibling at the applied school and their decision was not in the interest of the child. A call could have prevented all this. We still have our application confirmation email and no further communication received by any of them by post or email.
It was a real shock to us.
Has something like this happened to anybody else?
Does anybody have any advice? Thank you for listening.

As offers have already been made the fact you are a late applicant is irrelevant. Your position on the waiting list is determined by the admission criteria. You don't go to the back of the list because you are late.

If this is an infant class size appeal you will need to show that a mistake has been made or that the LA has acted unreasonably. The literature from your home LA would have said that you need to apply to them even if you want a place at a school in another LA so it is unlikely you could argue that they have made a mistake.

You may be able to convince an appeal panel that the LAs have acted unreasonably. They knew you had put in your application to the wrong LA and that your child had a sibling at this school so they could have reasonably concluded that this was your first choice. Rather than simply discarding your incorrect application they could have applied some common sense. I can't guarantee that an appeal panel will accept this argument but it is certainly worth trying.

Hi there,
They chose our home county application and decided to withdraw the other one without contacting us and the other application was to my eldest' school. My eldest is in yr 2. We did get an offer for a home county school.
Both applications were made on time. Thank you

SchoolsNightmare - The OP says they have been offered a school and also says it was the application to the neighbouring LA that was withdrawn. I have therefore assumed that the home LA processed the application sent to them correctly.

Prh47bridge

Yes you are right. Admission leaflet covers this issue. We missed it and assumed that the process was still the same since we did it three years ago. When we phoned and asked somebody from the admissions team what they would normally do if two applications were made separately by mistake she said that this is common and they would call the parents to ask for reprioritisation. However they didn't call us.
If we assume that the role of the admission team is just to apply the process and we failed to follow it then one can think that they did their job.
However, if their responsibility is to provide the best available option for the interest of the child then the conclusion is that they failed to do so since they have not used any common sense.

Cratos,
There is no doubt in my mind that the Councils concerned will both say that you applied incorrectly so therefore the application to the other council was not allowable and in that context I would agree with them. If you had read the admission information carefully this would have been obvious, it is your mistake.

However having said that you applied on time (written confirmation from the non-resident Council is a key document as it shows the length of time they had to do something about it) and it should have been obvious to the council where you are not in residence that this was a mistake. They had ample time to drop you a letter or email or telephone to say this is a mistake, you need to be applying through your resident Council. Why did they raise it with the resident Council and then just drop it? You could possibly say that the reaction of the two Councils was unreasonable (for that read perverse) in just throwing one application away.

Timing is everything with this. When did the Council first realise that the application was from out of area? Then was the first contact between the two authorities after the last date of application or before it? If before then I think you have a very good case for maladministration by the two Councils. If it was after the cut off date, then any change after that should have been counted as a late application but a little bit of common sense between the two Councils could have meant it was treated as an on-time application, just like a change of address is for a short period after the cut off date. Again are the Councils being reasonable or not, possibly then yes they are being reasonable.

You should as a late applicant with sibling be pretty much at the top iof the waiting list, so there is a reasonable chance of an offer with time but I would definitely appeal for a place (which is to the host Council) on the basis of them not being reasonable.

Thank you very much for responding to this on a Friday night. Very much appreciated.
Deadline for applications was around middle of January. We applied to Neigbour county on the 3rd of jan and home county on the 8 of jan.
Neighbour county called home county on the 20 th of feb. They talked and they put a note on our application stating that they are withdrawing neighbour county application. We also knownthe names of the people who made this decision.
Not sure if they noticednthe sibling factor - it was explained clearly on the top of the form but who knows. So I am not sure who is more guilty than the other. But they had plenty of time to warn us. That is for sure. Thanks again. It is good to know that we are not appealing for nothing.

I don't know if this will be of any use to you, I used this LGO case in my appeal document. The appeal was found in our favour but prior to our going through our statement and evidence (it was a complicated caes with other factors in play) so I dodn't know if it would have been useful to our case or not. I just thought it might be helpful as it supports the suggestion that a phone call letter would have been good pracitse in rare circumstances.

Local Government Ombudsman case Local settlement 04/A/1909

Somebody more experienced than may hopefully advise as to whether it might be useful or not.

The case to which Musey refers is from 2004/05. The child attended an infant school and applied for transfer to the associated junior school. The council refused entry on the grounds that the parents had failed to provide proof of residence. The parents said that they had provided the required proof with their application. The council's practise was to send a reminder if no proof of residence was supplied with the application and refuse entry if the parents still failed to provide proof. The parents in this case maintained they had not received any reminder.

The LGO decided that the council had not taken all reasonable steps open to it. He said that, where the child would get a place but for the missing proof of residence, the council should ring the parents. He said it would be an appropriate customer care approach and would be cost effective in avoiding the council having to deal with complaints. On this basis he recommended that the child be given a place. The council complied.

Whilst it is not directly comparable with this case I think it helps support the suggestion that the two councils were unreasonable in deciding to simply drop the application that was made incorrectly, especially when the incorrect application was for a school attended by the child's older sibling. From a customer care viewpoint, the appropriate thing to do would have been to contact you to check that you wanted this school as your first choice and alter your application appropriately. The fact that the two councils talked to each other helps in my view, although it would clearly have been better if they had talked before the deadline.

I think you have a reasonable case that the LAs have acted unreasonably. I would mention the LGO case referred to by Musey as I think it helps to show the LA's responsibilities. I don't know if an appeal panel will agree but, if they don't, I think this case would be worth referring to the LGO to see what they make of it.

I would like to thank you all for your incredibly helpful responses and your time. I think this case you are referring to can really help us. I guess from Lgo website we can get more details about this case.
We think that if a phone call was made, a letter or an email was sent even in february (this was two months before the notification date) we could correct our mistake. Now they have offered all the places and their hands are tight.

But even when we phoned last week they have not recommended late application route or to put our name in the waiting list. They said the only option was to appeal. We had to try hard to convince them that we should try the late applicant route since we looked like we have not even applied and you cannot appeal to a school you have not applied for I think.
I know they deal with thousands of applications but our home council now prioritises siblings over catchment, therefore I don't understand how they missed that. Admission suggests that we need to appeal against the Neigbour authority. I guess this is because the school comes under their territory and they will be impacted by the decision. It would be nice to see that they review their processes so that something similar to this doesn't happen again to anybody else.
I am so grateful thank you very very much once again.

I meant their hands are tied (-:

Cratos,
If you want to appeal for a place in the school where your other child is, then theoretically you need to ask for a place at the school. so that you can be informed that it is full. Thinking about it more, given the mess that has already gone on, I would be tempted to email both LAs and ask them who the request for the school place and appeal should be channeled through. I would hate to think that the request goes round and round again before they decide to do nothing about it!
Given the circumstances one would have thought that the LA would be keen to help so their attitude is not good. I would also chronicle and confirm everything in writing when you deal with the LAs. It is quite surprising how many cases I sit on where parents say they contacted the LA by phone etc and there is no record by the LA of that telephone conversation, leaving the panel with the problem of deciding who to believe.

This is the link to the LGO desions tinyurl.com/d53wb8u if you open the pdf the case is decision B6. Glad prh47bridge has commented on it's possible usefulness. I was helped massively by people on this site when I had my appeal last year so although I have no special knowledge I wanted to try to do my bit to help people this year. Fingers crossed for you. I'd echo admission, back up every phonecall etc with an email confirming what was said. Also while you're still early in the process start a detailed chronology of what has happened, who said what etc etc

You are wonderful. Thank you. I will follow your advice. Very very useful. Thanks for your time.

Hi!! I'm very new to this!! I am hoping somebody can give me a little advice as I am just beginning an appeal as my son was not given a place for september 2012 at the same school as his sister who is only one year older than him and in reception there now. It is a voluntary aided catholic school therefore is responsible for its own admissions via there admissions committee. I am weighing up all the grounds we may have for an appeal and this is my question..... The headteacher called me into the school as the decisions on the school places were being made(roughly one month before I recieved my local authoritys refusal letter).She told me that my son "probably was not being offered a place...and was telling me as she did not want it to come of a shock to me when I got my later later on from the local authority". Should she have done this? Is she going against any rules by doing this? could I use this as one of my grounds for appeal? I was shocked at the time when I was called in to see her! I would really appreciate ANY advice!! Thanks

You've posted this on two threads. I have answered on the other thread.