Moving during secondary application process

[InescapableDeath]

I know this has been done before, sorry.

We want to move house to take advantage of no stamp duty before March. The move has got nothing to do with schools - except I have to apply to secondaries for my son by the end of October.

We live in a small town with two secondaries on one far side of the town. We live quite close to both. The favoured one is further away but at our distance we should still get into it.

A house we looked at today is right on the other side of town. So far away we almost certainly wouldn't get into the better school if we lived there at the time of application.

The admissions policy says this under the heading Fraudulent applications:

When a family move shortly after the closing date of applications when one or more of the following applies:
o The family has moved to a property from which their application was less likely to be successful;

Does 'shortly after the closing date' mean that we'd be okay if we didn't move until the new year? Our potential seller is buying a new build that wouldn't be done until at least then.

The move is not fraudulent from my point of view. We know it's too late to affect our address in time for application and because there are so few houses available in our price range, we don't have that much control over the distance for wherever we go to next. As we haven't even offered yet, we can't guarantee that we will actually sell at all.

I would have thought if you lived between application and places being granted it would be viewed suspiciously.

I thought you would have had to notify them of a move

That’s why I’m asking and why I’ve included the bit of the policy to find out what ‘shortly after’ means.

We could potentially move to a house in a more favourable area - we just don’t know anything yet except we won’t move before end of applications but may move before allocation.

It will happen to a lot of people this year due to the stamp duty

I think most schools would want you in the application address until places awarded in March. Suspect you may have your place withdrawn - ring them to ask. Better safe than sorry. If the other a school is ok too then less to worry about.

But clearly people do move during the application process, and they don't always have a choice. I just wondered if there was a 'reasonable period' where they wouldn't consider it done on purpose.

The policy says: "school places will be withdrawn when false information is deliberately provided"

Moving house on its own does not equal providing false information deliberately.

We are seeing a different house this week that is closer to the more favoured school - but they wouldn't take that info into account either as far as I know, they would use where I live now.

Policy info above is from the school admission document.

This is from the North Herts website which is interesting:

Give your child's permanent address at the time you apply.

If you move after applying, you must send us proof of your new address.

AND

We can't use your new address for allocation purposes if we receive your proof of completion date or tenancy start date (along with evidence that you are living there) later than 4 December 2020.

Obviously I will tell the school if we move (never forget a house chain can break at any point so we may not) - that's why I asked the Q so that I can try to understand what impact it may or may not have.

Have you sold your current house yet or are you renting/not needing to sell first?

My understanding is if you move after the December deadline, your old address will be used for the allocation. If you want the new address to be used instead, then you might as well wait until after the March deadline and/or be considered a late applicant.

So I would make sure it was after December if I were you. Even better if after National Offers Day and before the Stamp Duty holiday stops ie aim for a Feb/March exchange/completion!

Have sold ours and need to find one to buy but there’s not much in the area.

No way we will move before December so need to make initial application from current address.

What are you supposed to avoid making a fraudulent application? Only apply to schools that are never oversubscribed? You have to apply somewhere.

I'd try and speak to someone and explain that you're looking at moving, but don't know where to yet, and what should you do about applying for secondaries? I'm guessing they're mainly looking at people who move so shortly after the deadline that they've clearly had the house lined up but have been delaying the move until after the deadline.

You could also try to keep some evidence of what houses you look at, so that you have something to show that you really didn't know whether you would be staying on that side of town or not.

Does anyone with a solid understanding of the rules know how the schools/LAs generally look on this - we don't imagine we'd move until Jan at the earliest, schools are allocated in March.