School admissions/moving house

zyper

Hi all

In a bit of a pickle & need some advice.

We are trying to move house to be in a catchment area for a good local school for our eldest. We were under the impression that if we finally find a place & put an offer in & start legals, this would be taken into consideration on the application regardless of the time frame it takes for the house moving chain to proceed by all parties concerned (ie you are effectively deemed as having moved into the catchment area). Upon contacting the council to confirm that we have had an offer accepted on a property & would we simply need to show them confirmation of the acceptance & maybe a solicitor's letter to prove we are proceeding/started legals to prove the whole thing is genuine, we were told that we must provide the new address once we moved in (this is very likely to be many months into the summer (after school starts) as the vendors will not have their new house ready till then!).

Is this correct as it means we'll very likely miss on a place in the school which is oversubscribed?

Cheeky_Monkey

Yes, it's correct.

They will very likely want proof of exchange of contracts at the least. Otherwise, they could give you a place at that school and then you pull out of the house purchase - they've seen it all before as it's a common ruse to get a place in a good school.

zyper

Cheeky_Monkey wrote: »

Yes, it's correct.

They will very likely want proof of exchange of contracts at the least. Otherwise, they could give you a place at that school and then you pull out of the house purchase - they've seen it all before as it's a common ruse to get a place in a good school.

So, do we need to have moved before the new school year starts for our kid to get into the school then? If that is the case, we'd need to look elsewhere within the catchment area (which is no easy feat) asap & pull our offer off this one?

TonyMMM

Sounds like it ....only the admissions team can tell you , but it seems they already have (in your original post).

pinkshoes

zyper wrote: »

So, do we need to have moved before the new school year starts for our kid to get into the school then? If that is the case, we'd need to look elsewhere within the catchment area (which is no easy feat) asap & pull our offer off this one?

You need to have exchanged contracts.

Why not offer to pay for rental accommodation for 6 months and get the sellers to complete the sale asap?