School catchment areas

[2ndtimemum9]

Hi all, was wondering if anyone had any advice for me. My house is currently on the market, we are waiting to sell and move to a certain school catchment area. My question is my parents live within the school catchment area, could we simply move in with them for a couple of months to get in the schools until our house sells and we find a suitable house in the area?

Thank you in advance for your responses

@NellyDElephant

I have an excellent example for this scenario. A family sold their house miles away, different area, rented a holiday cottage, for two weeks, used that address as their ‘permanent’ address as it was approaching deadline for primary places and got their DC into the local village primary school on that basis. Then promptly moved into their new permanent house, which was out of catchment but nearby. When we, at school, challenged this, the LA said ‘this was permitted’ I’m still struggling to comprehend how this is ok, almost a year later!

Don't they have to submit council tax and energy bills as proof of address? How would they have done that on a 2 week holiday rental?

My understanding is that as long as you live in the property and it’s your legal address by the cut of date for applications it dose not matter if you own another property nearby.

I’ve recently been discussing an appeal with the LA where we want to enrole our dcs into a school. Even though we own a house 50ft from one of the schools we want and within catchment of the other, unless we move into the property by the hearing date, our appeal is heard on our address of residence (250miles away) regardless of the fact we own the property and intend on moving in before September. We currently have tenants in the property who have a lease until the end of July, which is when they will move out so we can move in but that is after the appeal date. So we now have to decide if we kick the tenants out and move in before the end of the current school year, taking our DCs out of school just to ensure we live in the house by the hearing date, they have told me this will be June. It will mean my DCs missing 6-8 weeks of school just so we can reside in the address in the hopes we can get them into the schools we want on appeal. As well as our tenants having to move out sooner that we agreed with them. Our only alternative is to move when originally planned, end of July beginning of august and hope by some miracle we get 3 DCs in to the same school during the summer holidays.

This information is consistent with what we were told 6 years ago when we first started the school application process, at that time we were buying a property and moving areas after the original round of applications so we had to wait until we were allocated a school then go on the waiting lists and appeal for a place in one or more of the schools in the new area. At the time we were told as long as we had settled the sale by the appeal date that would be sufficient for our address purposes. Luckily we actually got in one of our chosen schools via the waiting list on the address we were living at, which was 30miles away so we didn’t need to go through the appeal process.

Some accademy schools popular secondary have rules around this, but it isn't common. Some LA's have changed so that children in catchment have priority over siblings out of catchment, which helps stop parents doing this to help get subsequent children in to the school.

It is morally wrong on so many levels that children who live in catchment end up out of catchment because people do this, but often not illegal.

My understanding is that as long as you live in the property and it’s your legal address by the cut of date for applications it dose not matter if you own another property nearby.

In an increasing number of LAs, that is not true. If you own a property nearby, the LA will use that address regardless of whether you actually live there.

The difference in Prepaway"s case is that the other house is miles away. You clearly can't commute 250 miles, so they will take wherever you are actually living.

The potential fraud issue is when addresses are close together. If admissions investigate, they won't believe someone moved in with family 10 mins away, leaving their perfectly decent family home standing empty, as a permanent move. They will assume it is to get a school place. Of course if you have sold/ended the tenancy they will have to accept the family address, as you don't have another one. This is presumably what happened in the holiday let example mentioned above.

I think you have all missed OPs update that she doesn’t need to apply until Jan 2023x She expects to have sold her house & moved in with her parents well before this while they continue to house hunt .. if they’ve sold their house & just live with Grandparents, surely that’s ok?! We lived with my parents for 9 months once upon a time, it was our permanent address during that time. We owned no other property. It was very much home for a temporary period!

It depends. The LA may still view it as an attempt to game the system in order to get a place at the preferred school. If they take that view, the OP may have to convince an appeal panel that the LA has acted unreasonably.

@zolla that is exactly it. I will be buying in the area. My question was just how long would I need to be living at my parents property prior to school application? I have no intention on cheating the system, we are just struggling to find a house within the area that we can afford. Thanks

[quote 2ndtimemum9]@zolla that is exactly it. I will be buying in the area. My question was just how long would I need to be living at my parents property prior to school application? I have no intention on cheating the system, we are just struggling to find a house within the area that we can afford. Thanks [/quote]
Your best bet is to talk to the relevant LA about the approach they take - there is no one answer to that question. And ideally get, in writing, that they would allow you to use your parent's address assuming you no longer own another property locally.

Some LAs, as prh says, will still take a negative view of such a plan, especially if the school in question is very oversubscribed or they have a general local issue with people using temporary addresses. If your parents live much closer than any property you are likely to be able to buy/rent, they make take the attitude that using their address is still an attempt at fraud.

In some areas, the use of temporary rentals etc is rife and so the LA will be very hot on what it sees as fraud. The LA also doesn't need to prove fraud in order to deny the use of an address - it can decline to use it based on suspicion, leaving the applicant to plead their case with an appeals panel.

[quote 2ndtimemum9]@zolla that is exactly it. I will be buying in the area. My question was just how long would I need to be living at my parents property prior to school application? I have no intention on cheating the system, we are just struggling to find a house within the area that we can afford. Thanks [/quote]
Then you would need to have proof that you regarded the move as permanent. So for example child benefit address , doctor, dentist, car tax, car insurance, electoral roll, etc all re figured to your parents address.

It would need to be your legal address on deadline day, as long as you have exchanged on your house before this date there is not a problem with you living with your parents however if you have yet to exchange, unless the property is completely empty with a sale in progress it's likely to be seen as potentially fraudulent.

All that said you have 10 months, put it on the market now and you shouldn't have a problem