Summary: A parent complained that a mistake by the Council over his address caused him to make a late application for a school place for his son, which resulted in the refusal of a place at his preferred school. But the Ombudsman does not have jurisdiction to investigate the complaint because the parent has already used his right of appeal to an admission appeal panel regarding the matter, and because the school in question is an academy.

How I considered this complaint

5. I considered the information Mr B provided with his complaint, and his comments in response to a draft version of this decision.

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What I found

6. C was due to start at secondary school in September 2020. The deadline for applying for secondary school places was the end of October 2019.
7. The Council sent letters to all parents of secondary school age children reminding them about the deadline for applications. But Mr B did not receive a reminder letter. He subsequently found out that the Council had mistakenly sent this to his previous address despite it knowing his current address.
8. By the time Mr B realised he should make an application the deadline had already passed. In the circumstances the Council treated his application as late, which meant it was only considered after all the on-time applications. C was turned down for a place at the School, and the Council instead offered a place at another local school.
9. Mr B appealed about the refusal of a place at the School. But the independent appeal panel turned this down.
10. Mr B then complained to the Council. In response the Council apologised for its poor level of service in Mr B’s case but said this did not impact on C’s late application as a place at the School would never have been available. However Mr B said the School’s representative at his appeal acknowledged that C would have been offered a place if his application had been on time.

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Analysis

11. I consider that we cannot investigate Mr B’s complaint.

12. In particular the law prevents us from investigating matters where the person complaining has used a right of appeal to a statutory tribunal, in this case a school admission appeal panel.
13. Part of an appeal panel’s role is to consider if the admission arrangements were correctly applied to the child in question. The panel must uphold an appeal if the arrangements were not correctly applied and this resulted in the child missing out on a place. Therefore I suggest the appeal panel would have been able to address the issue Mr B raised about a mistake in the admissions process in his case, if it had seen reason to.
14. We can investigate complaints about fault in the way appeal panels deal with appeals. However this only applies where the school in question in the appeal is maintained by the local authority.
15. The school Mr B applied for is an academy, which is not maintained by the Council. But the law precludes us from considering complaints about admissions to, and appeals for, academy schools. Therefore I consider this restriction on our jurisdiction to investigate also applies in Mr B’s case.
16. In addition, even if we did have jurisdiction to pursue Mr B’s complaint I do not see we could achieve the outcome he is seeking. First, we have no power to direct councils to offer school places. Second, the academy is its own admission authority, which means it makes its own decisions about who it offers places to. As a result the Council would have no power to impose an admission on the academy in these circumstances.

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Final decision

17. The Ombudsman cannot investigate Mr B’s complaint that the Council’s error concerning his address led to him making a late application for a place for his son at an academy school which was subsequently refused. This is because Mr B has already used his right of appeal to a school admission appeal panel about the issue in question, and because the law prevents us from pursuing complaints about academy schools.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman