High school admission appeal

[Easyme]

We relocated in June 22 and had only electeic bills on my name so attached them with my daughter's school admission application in Oct 22. Council asked for more evidence in Dec22 and I send electoral register conformation which was dated Dec 22 and driving licence dated Dec 22. They still used my old address because they said the documents I sent had date after Oct 22 which was last date for application. Is I fair? Can someone advice how can I go about in this situation? Thank you

This doesn’t seem right, but I’m certainly not an expert (hopefully some of those will be along soon!).

Do you still own (or rent) your old property? When did you go on the Electoral Register? What do the LA say about the last date for changing addresses on applications (this varies)?

Where is your council tax bill from? They will search the records of the council tax. So if you are down as paying council tax at the old property too, it will confuse things.

@EduCated I own old property and paying council tax myself as rented including council tax. LA asked for more document and I sent driving licence and electoral register conformation dated Dec22. For which they are saying it is dated after application date. But my electeic bills are dated pre application date

@Dacadactyl you are right but I have rented includ8ng council tax I am renting new place including council tax too so can by law they use this reason to not use new address?

The key question here is likely to be whether the LEA has published and complied with its own policies on how to confirm addresses. In other words, could you reasonably have known that a electricity bill wasn’t enough?

What do their published policies (on website or in their schools admission booklet) say about what documents they’ll accept and when they must be dated? What did their communication in December 2022 say about this? Was it clear that they wanted evidence from the date of application /October 2922 or earlier?

@PanelChair thank you. All they mentioned initially that they need any document as proof of address. Even on the later request for more document they were not specific on just council tax document and did not mention date deadline too.

I’ve seen your other thread.

The situation you describe - you own a house, have rented it out on a 12 month tenancy, and are renting a new house near the school(s) you want, also on a 12 month tenancy - is exactly the sort of situation where many LEAs will want to satisfy themselves that this is a genuine move and not a rental of convenience. Hence my questions above about what their policies say.

In our LA, they state you have to show evidence of move to new property, plus total DISPOSAL of old property. You would need to show you have got rid of your old place too.

If your LA says the same, they might raise eyebrows if you've moved into catchment in rented. It'll depend what their policies say I expect, but I'm no expert on the ins and outs of it.

From the details on your other thread, it's probably correct that they use your owned-property address.

it will depend on which LA as to what their rules are, but generally if you own one property and rent another they will use the owned-property address even if it is rented out. exceptions would be e.g. if the owned property was more than 2 hours travelling time away.

renting a place near a nice catchment school temporarily whilst renting out an owned property in a less-preferred catchment area is exactly what some people do to fraudulently gain a school place they aren't entitled to. so the loophole is closed and they are unlikely to make an exception for you.

How far have you moved?
Is this Sheffield to London or 3 miles down the road in London?

@PanelChair how can they prove that someone is moving for the reason to get admission in preffered school. They cant just assume aright? In my case it was due to family situation.

The don't need to?

They have a rule in place to prevent people playing the system.

That is why your child didn't get a place - even if the reasons for your move are genuine.

It's unfortunate for you but I am not sure you can do anything - unless they have broken their own rules.

All you can do is appeal for a place at your preferred school or go on waiting lists.

I think you'll find that they aren't wrong to use your old address. It looks like you've moved for a school place. How far did you move?

@TeenDivided moved less than 2 miles from old place. Old House was in Nice schoool catchment as well but obviously not convenient from New place so it's not that we moved from bad to good catchment.

All you can do is appeal for a place at your preferred school or go on waiting lists.

But you may find you are still considered to live at Old House for the order on wl. Is the allocated school within same area? Assume you will probably not have moved gp etc. As long as the rule on address has been applied correctly the LA does not have anything to prove.

Yes agreed.

But waiting lists can move and its not unheard of to get a place at a school even if your address is a little bit away.

And it seems like OP hasn't got much choice- I can't see her address being updated to the rented one.

Most LEAs have a policy which sets out how, when the child has two addresses, they decide which one to use. This will cover (usually) where the parents are separated and the child lives between two homes and where the resident parent has moved but still has an address in the previous area.

They don’t have to prove that this is an address of convenience. You have to convince them that it isn’t.

Without knowing which LEA we’re talking about, nobody can say exactly why your new address wasn’t accepted, but it is likely to be because you haven’t disposed of your previous home and both the tenancies are short. If they do have doubts about the genuineness of the move, it probably doesn’t help that (it seems) you didn’t change your electoral registration and driving licence until they asked for further evidence in December.

I suggest you explain to the LEA the family circumstances that necessitated the move and explain why you did not sort out the documentation sooner. Ask them to give you the benefit of the doubt here. If they won’t, then your other option is to take the matter to appeal, where you’ll have to persuade the panel that the LEA was unreasonable not to use your new address.

Two miles isn't far for a child to travel. I take it that the two miles was crucial to get your child into your preferred school? I think you'll have a hard job convincing anyone that you didn't move for school catchment reasons, tbh.

OP: they're using the wrong address

experts and everyone else: you got caught trying to game the system, sorry that's tough

OP: no it was a 'family situation'

OP - you got caught - hold your hands up. Do you think people haven't tried this before?

Also experts and others: This seems to have all the features that might make the LEA think this was a move of convenience. If there’s a convincing explanation, linked to your family circumstances, you need to tell the LEA.

If the old house was in Nice School catchment too you would have got a place at Nice School anyway with the old address surely? Given that they used the old address and you then didn't get your choices, the old address must have been that little bit too far away, and that short distance moved must have been significant.

You need to check the actual written procedures for your LEA and for the specific schools to check what the rules are. In general, the rules don't rely on anything subjective like "why". Same principle as with "religious" entry criteria, they don't measure your faith, they measure what is actually measurable i.e. how often you are physically in church for a service. So similarly, the rules are unlikely to have a condition about why you moved from further away to the school to closer to the school with a setup that could be easily reversed after a few months, their rules will be that under such circumstances the old address will be used, regardless of why. If the old property is being sold, there will be specific definitions for the timescales for the sale and for the life-admin to have been made for the new property by which they have a definition for whether or not to accept it.

These thing are such a commonly-attempted fraud that they can't have a system where the subjective importance of the why has to be judged on a case-by-case basis as part of the initial allocations round. The allocations round happens on solid, provable facts and appears to have been executed correctly. You can try your luck explaining your "why" to an appeals pannel who have the power to agree that your "why" is a genuine and overwhelmingly reasonable act that had nothing to do with an attempt at obtaining an admissions place fraudulently, but they will need some convincing.

@FeinCuroxiVooz I wish it were true that they measure your faith by how often you go to Church. Not the case in my circumstances. We have been refused a place at the outstanding Catholic school because we live too far away. Regular Churchgoers here and I'm fairly confident we'll have lost a place to numerous people who last set foot in Chirch on the day of their child's Baptism! They only ask to see Baptism certificate here.

Did you apply to go on the electoral roll in December when they asked for the proof? Or did you apply in June as soon as you moved in?

@Dacadactyl Apologies for the over-generalisation, I was giving this as an example that they don't and can't measure your faith, they measure what is measurable, whether that be number of times your feet cross a church threshold (the default around here) or baptismal certificates, it's got to be something that can be evidenced and documented. Doesn't matter how ferverently you believe or indeed you can even be an atheist and still meet the criteria if you want to.
So in your area it's probably entirely within the published criteria that you will have had people who lived closer to the school than you, if their criteria is the binary of baptised or not, followed by distance.
But this is a bit of a derail from the point of this thread.

Taken from N Yorks website You are living at a temporary address.We do not usually accept a temporary address if you still possess a property which was previously used or www.ashlyns.herts.sch.uk/admissions-criteria-2023-24/

Moving 2 miles with no good reason e.g. needing an accessible home due to sudden illness or injury of one of the family, whilst trying to sell the other property, sounds like application fraud to deny another child a place at the desired school.