Withdrawal of a place

[dadonfire]

Could anyone offer me some advice please we are currently going through the application process for my daughter who is due to start school in September.

We are on the border of 2 LEA's and in our application chose one school from are a and two from area b. We were declined for all three places and offered a different school from area a's LEA which is going to be untenable in terms of travel etc but area b offered us a place at another school which would be perfect but we live 8 miles away so were very perplexed and on the first day of term after easter went into school to provide proof of address, age etc.

The offer letter is a good two weeks old and the school has today come back to us to say sorry that offer was made in error and we have withdrawn it.

The heartbreaking point of view for us is that all my daughters friends from Nursery are going to our first choice school so she was devastated she could not go to school with her friends, we managed to console her by showing her the fantastic school and bigging it up and showing her the school etc so to now tell her she can't go to that one either is going to break her heart and is just destroying us - any help gratefully recd.

No, being offered and accepting a place elsewhere does not affect any appeal.

Accepting an offer from a waiting list does not affect your position on other waiting lists unless the offer is from one of your preferred schools, in which case you are normally removed from the waiting lists for schools that were lower preferences.

There was clearly a mistake in that you received offers from two different LAs. You should only have received an offer from your home LA. But that is not your concern. Having received an offer you were entitled to accept it and expect it to be honoured.

As Tiggytape says, the new Admissions Code does not set any particular deadlines for withdrawing an offer made in error. It has long been accepted that an offer must be withdrawn within 3 days but that is only an LGO ruling and could be overturned by the courts. The EFA appears to be working on the basis that this particular LGO ruling does not apply to academies or free schools. We probably won't get clarity on how long the authority has to withdraw an offer unless someone takes it to judicial review.

Having said that, many (possibly most) appeal panels are aware of the previous LGO ruling so there is a reasonable chance they will agree that the school has taken too long to withdraw this offer.

Thanks all, Prh the school that made the offer is actually an academy - how would that affect our position for the appeal?

Just to clarify the timescales we recd the written offer for our place dated 16th April and have been informed today that a letter was issued today withdrawing the place.

For the appeal it should make no difference.

It may make a difference if the appeal fails and you need to refer the matter to the EFA. The evidence I have suggests the EFA is less inclined to come down on the side of parents than the LGO. But evidence is limited at the moment so I wouldn't like to say that definitively.

sorry EFA and LGO?

great thank you all so much, I think I will appeal on the grounds I have been disadvantaged and it is unfair - any useful reading material etc anyone can suggest that will help me ensure my appeal is correctly worded and substantiated etc?

brilliant thanks Tiggy and others I can't thank you enough, not sure what the outcome will be but I can sleep tonight knowing I can give it my best shot and hopefully console my wife before she floods the house with tears. Completely under-estimated how stressful and upsetting a situation like this could be until I was in it myself!

I would make the point that if an offer could be withdrawn as late as two weeks after it has been made, thereby leaving someone who has accepted it in good faith without a place then the whole offer system would fail as no one could trust it any more.

As it is an academy contact your MP as well. As the admissions authority in this case is the Academy the error was probably theirs. The staff in the LA may well be more on your side than you realise (or they could ever admit)

Can't agree more with Tiggytape that you need to get everything in writing from anybody you speak to. In these kind of cases it is all about what can be proved factually and not as telephone conversations etc.

The key point is that you should have only received one offer, that is what the co-ordinated schemes are supposed to do for all LAs. The offer should have been made through the LA that you are resident in, even if the school is in another LA. As an academy the offer would still have been through the LA for the initial allocation of places, so there has been a serious breakdown in process here. So which LA A or B do you live in?

That of course brings into question whether anything is right in your application and the decisions made by both LAs over the three schools that you did not get places in. I would be tempted to email the LA that you are resident in and ask the question of why you were not offered any place in the three school preferred, under what admission criteria were you considered, the distance that you are from the school and the furthest distance that was offered. You need to look at the information and see whether it all makes sense or whether the whole thing looks wrong.

You of course need to appeal for the place offered and make certain you retain the originals of all the relevant documents submitted as part of your appeal. The appeal would be to the school as they are an academy and therefore their own admission authority

Is it worth sending something by email / recorded mail to point out that you had accepted the place at the school before you received the withdrawal of offer letter?

It's just that if you handed the letter in by hand, and the school realised there had been a cock up, so told you at time that there was a mistake, and 'ushered you out' as you said, they might try to argue that you left the letter behind by mistake / they didn't open it / decided it was invalid as they'd realised they'd made a mistake / thrown it away and sung lalalalalala hoping you wouldn't notice/etc and will try to argue that you didn't actually accept the place.

Might be worth trying to get something in writing to show that you accepted the place - not least as from what I understand from other threads on MN, if you turn down a place the council doesn't have an obligation to find you a new one. And if you're not supposed to have 2 offers simultaneously then they might not have it in their procedures what to do - they might try to say that as you turned down their offer, your problem. So at least having something in writing to prove that you accepted the place you wanted might be useful...

(I'm wondering out loud here rather than being an expert in this - just having read several threads on the matter, it's certainly made me aware of the importance of having a paper trail for everything - particularly when it is in your own interests to, when other parties don't have the same interest you do - or when it is in their interest to not have received or kept certain documents!)

The appeal and getting the withdrawn place reinstated aside, where does the OP stand in terms of actually getting a school place? At the moment he doesn't have one at all. Can the LA just say to go on waiting lists or are they required to find a place? Normally if you reject the place then the LA have fulfilled their obligation, but in this case the correct offer was rejected because of their error. Are they required to rectify that and find a place.

Is it worth him pushing that angle now or waiting to see if an appeal panel will overturn the decision first?

zipzap - Whether or not the OP had accepted the place is unlikely to be an issue at appeal. And the school certainly can't argue that the OP rejected the place as they would be unable to provide any evidence for that.

RafaIsTheKingOfClay - In this situation the LA has an obligation to rectify the error and come up with a place.

Thanks all again I will try and answer the questions:

Admission - We are actually resident in area a and the mistake was made by area b. We received an offer from our home area (a) with a completely different school from the ones applied but weren't happy with that school if I am honest (two failed ofsted visits etc) so were going to appeal anyway but then received another offer from area b which we do not live in with this good school that again we hadnt applied to. We returned the rejection letter to our home area and on the first open day of school after we received the letter my wife went in to accept and provide proof etc. The school copied the accept letter and gave her the original back and then informed her they didn't have our daughter on their list so they would speak to the LA and come back to us. 24 hours went by and we had still not heard anything so my wife called to chase and again was told someone would call us back. The LA then rang her directly to say their was a letter in the post as it was an error.

We received the letter this morning which states that they are aware from their colleagues in our home LA that we have been offered a place there so the offer made by them was an IT error and will not stand? Seems like they are trying to pass the buck however we have already rejected the place in our home LA based on the offer from them.

We are now without a school and have this morning been put on 6 waiting lists in the LA that made the error (6 being the maximum we are told) but are at best number 15 on these lists as we live so far from the area currently?

You need to contact your home LA and explain the situation. They may be able to reinstate the place you rejected. If not they should find another place for you.

LA B can't pass the buck like that. As you were resident in LA A they should not have made an offer in any circumstances. They should have simply passed any offer to your home LA. But they can't get away from the fact that they did offer you the place and took too long to withdraw it. You are not expected to be an admission expert. If you are offered a place at any school you are entitled to believe it is legitimate.

I hope you win your appeal. Make the point that you have been disadvantaged by what happened in that you have been left without a place, at least temporarily. And if your LA still hasn't come up with a place by the time of the appeal make sure you tell the panel.

I didn't realise there was a maximum number of waiting lists you could go on?? Can that be right? (given they've sent you badly astray once already)

So the appeal would be with LA B because they made the offer and the mistake. The slightly bizarre point is that you did not ask for a place at the school so I am at a loss to understand why they would offer you a place when you live in a different LA and must have known that the two preferences you selected in LA B were rejected. The only reason I can think of is that you were confused with someone else who would have been eligible for a place at the school, but then surely the school would have realised the mistake straight away.

The latest school admission code does actually say that an offer can be withdraw because of an error. Prior case law has always indicated towards an offer being withdrawn after more than 3 days being unsound but the honest answer is that I don't think there is any case law at present which supercedes the previous cases which go back years. So it is for sure going to be the LA arguing the case that the new admission code does give them the right to withdraw a place on the basis of an error, even if it was their gigantic mistake.

I would go back to the LA and say in writing all the case law says that they should not withdraw a place in such circumstances when there is a significant time span between offer and withdrawal. Make them reply in writing to you about the time scale because the probability is that it is the admission office that is making the decision but it will be the lawyers that say whether they can and will defend the position at an appeal.

I would repeat my earlier point that if it becomes the case that any offer made can be withdrawn due to error on the maker's point at any time after the offer has been made, then logically the whole admission system would break down as none could be sure of a place until the first day of term. There has to be a cut off point for practical reasons. From the legal point of view (I am no lawyer) it may be that all previous case law superseded; in which case, no doubt, new case law will arise. There has to be a stopping point somewhere.

Just putting together my appeal letter and making sure I cross all the t's and dot the i's. Do I need to quote this particular case law and does anyone know any more details?

The appeal panel should be familiar with it. I can dig out the LGO reference if you feel you need it but don't waste time reading it. The judgement doesn't contain a specific statement to the effect that an offer made in error cannot be withdrawn after 3 days but that is how it has always been interpreted.

Thank you

UPDATE

We have recd a response from the LA informing us that as we did not request a place at the school in question we have no grounds to appeal and they have not withdrawn an offer they have simply corrected an administrative error - any advice on what next (if anything is possible?) would be much appreciated.

Seems like they have slammed the door in our face and not got a clue where to go from here?

You can appeal to any school. You don't have to have applied there in the first place. The LA don't want you toappeal as they will be opposing it. They are not giving you impartial advice.