What address can I use for DCs primary application?

[SecretMouse]

Very long story short... DC and I live with my mum in city A, 3.5 days a week (thurs-sun) as my office is based nearby. She looks after the kids on thurs and fri whilst I go into work. Meanwhile, DH works full time in city B (approx 200 miles away)and joins us in city A on a fri eve. We then all drive back to city B on a Sunday eve. I work from home mon-weds and the kids go to nursery. Then the kids and I drive back to city A on a weds eve/thurs morn so I can go into the office again.

This set up is exhausting so we all plan to move to city A permanently and DH will commute back to city B a couple of times a week.

I need to apply for primary schools by jan 2019. There’s no way we’ll have our own place in city A by then. So can I use my mums address on the application? At the point of application, we will live there approx. half the week anyway. We have bedrooms there. We don’t own or rent any other property in the area. But we’re not on the council tax and will still own our house in city B (but it’s 200 miles away).

I don’t want to obtain a place by ‘deception’ but I don’t think I’m doing that.

You need to ask the LA of city A. For us we needed a copy of the council tax bill with a parent's name on it. But this differs depending on LA.

In which case it is wide open to legal challenge.

No it is not. Access to a school place in a new town is not being denied. If a school has places you must be offered the place regardless of where you live. The law allows LAs to make their own rules on this. As long as their rules are not Wednesbury unreasonably the courts will not interfere. Refusing to use a rented address when a family owns a house is not Wednesbury unreasonable.

"refusing to use a rented address when a family owns a house is not Wednesbury unreasonable."

I feel like a stuck record, but I'm still mystified. So what happens in my hypothetical situation above of a temporary move to Liverpool when I live permanently in Brighton? In that situation I have to either only rent near a non-popular school in Liverpool, or be forced to sell my house of 20 years in Brighton, which I openly intend to return to after my Liverpool contract has ended (since temporary city moves are still legal I believe)? And this forced sale is deemed a reasonable outcome even though there is transparently obviously no fraud possible, since in the absence of time machines I will not be able to keep my children at a school in Liverpool while doing the school run from Brighton every morning and evening? I'm genuinely amazed that a council could defend this rule as reasonable in court.