Relocating primary school advice

[Naturesmuse]

We are relocating from a city on the south coast to the rural area just north of Penrith, Cumbria this August, and we are very excited!
We have a 9yr old and 7yr old who will need to be registered into a new Primary school asap for the next academic year. Our tenancy agreement is still processing, so we haven't signed off on it yet, but we have completed referencing and hope to get everything confirmed this week.
When should I start applications to the new school? As I have a potential address, can I start the process now, or should we wait until the tenancy agreement is signed off?
How long do schools take to make a decision?
Do you have any tips for settling kids in to a new town, community/school?
We know the area fairly well, but are moving away from family and friends. We will have August off together to settle in and explore a bit more, but it will be our first home move, so any tips would be much appreciated.

We did this and it's worked out very well!

Check the school admissions section of the local council's website - that'll provide the details you need about timeframes. Look for in-year admissions. Ours we could only apply for a school place 20 school days before we needed it, and no earlier than that. So work out when you'll be moving and count backwards.

We actually started our tenancy early so we had an address in the area. But that will depend on how much competition there is for places. We only moved in a few days before the school start but started the tenancy a month before that.

Admissions are handled by the local council but we emailed the six closest primary schools to our new address to ask if there were any places available in the school year we needed - that gave us an idea where there might be a space (you rank your application with four schools in preference order) although obviously things can change as families arrive and leave. The emails also gave us an insight into how organised, helpful and friendly each school was!

Also you're unlikely to get a response from schools once they get into the school holidays.

Good luck!

Settling in was pretty straightforward. We soon struck up conversations in local play areas and party invites started coming once DD started school.