Under the Freedom of Information Act (2000), I would like to please request the below information. This is regarding applications for school places that have been made/are suspected to be made using fraudulent information:
1. Does the council have a system/procedures for detecting fraudulent school admission applications? If so, please provide details of what these are. Please include if any new procedures have been introduced in the past few years.
The local authority will investigate any allegation of fraud that is made. We will ask for applicants to provide documentary proof of their address to satisfy the local authority that the address provided is the address that the pupil will be living at, at the time of admission.
2. How many applications have you investigated on suspicion of being fraudulent in the past three academic years? (2023-24 / 2022-23/ 2021-22)
This data is not held or stored by the admissions team.
3. How many of these applications were found to be fraudulent?
This data is not held or stored by the admissions team.
4. For the fraudulent applications, please include further details of what the offence was / which school the application was for and what the outcome of the investigation was. (Please include as much details about the offences as is possible.)
This information is not held
5. Overall, how many fraudulent applications for each year were:
a) Not accepted?
Not held.
b) Resulted in a child being removed from school after application found to be fraudulent?
Not held.
6. Please include the number of fraudulent applications that led to appeals by parents, and the number of appeals that won.
Not held.
7. Did any of these offences result in prosecution? If so, please provide details.
No. The local authority has never prosecuted anyone as a result of a fraudulent application.