Summary: A parent complained that the Council website’s home to school distance checker showed that his son was wrongly denied a place at his preferred secondary school. But we will not investigate this matter because the parent had a separate right of appeal about the refusal of a school place. In addition, the Council has taken suitable action to correct its website information.

How I considered this complaint

5. I considered the information Mr B provided with his complaint. I also took account of the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.

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My assessment

6. We do not have grounds to investigate Mr B’s complaint.
7. First, the law prevents us from investigating where the person complaining has used a right of appeal to a statutory tribunal. This restriction applies in Mr B’s case because he appealed to a school admission appeal panel following the School’s decision not to admit C.
8. Part of an appeal panel’s role is to consider if the admission arrangements were correctly applied to the child in question. The appeal decision letter shows that the panel considered this matter in C’s case, including the issue about home to school distance measurements. But the panel decided the admission arrangements were correctly applied because the system the Council used in allocating school places was different to the one available on its website, and the proper method had produced a slightly longer home to school distance in C’s case. The panel went on to refuse Mr B’s appeal.
9. There is no further right of appeal about an appeal panel’s decision except by judicial review. But unsuccessful appellants can make a complaint about the way a panel made its decision if they feel there was a fault in the appeal process.
10. We can investigate complaints about fault by appeal panels. However this only applies where the school in question is maintained by the local authority.
11. But the School is an academy, which is not maintained by the Council, and the law precludes us from considering complaints about admissions to, and appeals for, academy schools. So we cannot investigate any issue Mr B has with how the panel made its decision about the application of the admission arrangements in C’s case. However Mr B could have complained about this matter to the Education & Skills Funding Agency which deals with complaints regarding academy appeals.
12. The result Mr B wants from his complaint is for C to be offered a place at the School. But in the circumstances we cannot achieve this outcome for him or justify making any recommendation to that effect.
13. But even though we cannot look at Mr B’s complaint about the application of the admission arrangements in C’s case, I have considered if we have any other grounds to start an investigation concerning the issue of Council’s misleading website information.
14. The Council has acknowledged its fault in using an alternative home to school distance measurement system on its website. But it has now corrected this error so that its website information on distance measurements aligns with the method it uses when school places are allocated. It has also apologised to Mr B for giving incorrect information which led him to believe C should have been given a place at the School. I consider this is a suitable remedy which satisfactorily addresses the injustice Mr B was caused by the Council’s misleading website information.

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Final decision

15. We will not investigate Mr B’s complaint that the Council’s website information about home to school distance in his case meant that his son was wrongly denied a place at his preferred secondary school. This is because Mr B had a separate right of appeal to an appeal panel which considered this matter. The Council has also taken suitable remedial action by apologising and correcting the distance measurement information which appears on its website.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman