moving closer to a school in London

[chiaralev]

While looking at admission criteria for secondary schools in / near London, e.g. Camden School for Girls, Dame Alice Owen, I came across Local authorities' criteria and in many cases they demand you move to the area 36 months before you apply. However if you bought or rented a new property closer to the school you must prove that you no longer own the old address. I find this frustrating, DD is in Y5 and I thought I had time to buy a new property where to live by renting my existing one. However this is not an option as I need to sell my current property, which I don't want to/ can't do. Does anyone have any advice: any boroughs or good secondaries where this rule does not apply?

That you don't want to sell a house you no longer live in within 50 miles would set alarm bells ringing for me too. Plenty of schools and boroughs don't have this rule in London, those schools have only brought it in to deal with people "moving" for precisely this reason. It does say in the DAO admission arrangements that the governors would look at each case - if you have a good reason why not to sell, can you ask the school for further guidance/a pre-look at your evidence? Will you be moving child and primary school this year? Where are your jobs? What has changed to cause the move?

I wouldn't recommend moving for Dame Alice Owen.. It has a notoriously small catchment (think a couple of hundred metres) and the admissions team are hot on checking out the evidence to prove residency. You could move into the catchment to sit the exam but it is a bet because 1000 kids sit the exam for 60 places. It is a great school of course, but difficult to get into.

What other schools are on your radar? Where do you live now? There are many good schools across London, and some don't have catchments. We can advise if we know more.

Please don't take this the wrong way but the rules are exactly there to avoid people renting our their real home, renting in catchment and moving back afterwards. I would be suspicious too.

Thanks for your reply. The idea was not to rent and then move back, but to buy a new bigger property (currently in smallish flat so we need to move) where to live permanently and renting out the first one for financial reasons, eg getting a rent to pay for a new bigger place . Unfortunately we can't sell the current property because the building where our flat is located has dry rot and all flats are unsalable until the problem gets resolved. We live near Kilburn/ Brondersbury park

Thanks for your reply. The idea was not to rent and then move back, but to buy a new bigger property (currently in smallish flat so we need to move) where to live permanently and renting out the first one for financial reasons, eg getting a rent to pay for a new bigger place . Unfortunately we can't sell the current property because the building where our flat is located has dry rot and all flats are unsalable until the problem gets resolved. We live near Kilburn/ Brondesbury park

If you are planning on renting out a property to pay for larger one I think this often doesn’t stack up either. Speaking as a landlord you need to take into account voids, s24 tax, getting it upto a std rentable, the necessary certificates etc. Also if a flat check the lease does permit renting. It is rarely something that pays well under the new rules which is why many landlords have been selling up. Another reason renting out an old property is even less likely to viewed on by schools as an ‘accidental landlord’ type scenario.

In our corner of London, Bromley each school has its own admissions. DD’s Grammar anyone can sit the test but you have to be in the 9 mile catchment by a certain date, I believe by start of December when the last notification of change of address after CAF submission is permitted so the CAF is considered on time.