No, you don't have to accept the place - from the parents' point of view, the 'binding' bit is that you can't just say, I don't like the panel's decision, they must try again - you only get the one chance to appeal for each academic year, unless you have had a major change of circumstance. (This doesn't affect your right to raise a complaint of the process leading to an unsuccessful appeal was incorrect).
It certainly should not mean that your existing place is taken away, and will not affect your place on the waiting list of any other school' that you ranked higher.
Not taking up a place gained through a successful appeal doesn't mean that the panel go back to someone else and tell them that their unsuccessful one outcome has been overturned, though. What it does mean is that the school is one pupil less far away from going under PAN again, if others turn their places down.
As for Why appeal if you wouldn't take the place?
- there is the legal right to appeal any place applied for and refused
- assuming that a parent has ranked schools on their CAF in their true order of preference, it is possible to have been turned down for several schools for which they have a genuine preference over the one allocated
- appeals tend to take place during the same 'window' and you don't have any influence over when within that window they are held, but as the deadline for appealing and guaranteeing that your appeal will be held along with the main batch will have passed, you can't risk waiting for the outcome of one appeal before lodging one for another school
- however, it is possible, even if e.g. your pref 3 school's appeals are held on a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and your pref 1 school's appeals are held on Thursday and Friday, that you will have had a positive response re pref 1 before an also positive response re pref 3, so you now don't want the pref 3 place.
Or, you may have heard such awful things about a school in the presenting officer's case and subsequent questioning, that by the time the outcome letter arrives, on mature reflection, you decide to stick with what you've got.