The Local Government Ombudsman and School Appeals

What a process complaint actually covers

If you believe the process itself — not the panel’s judgement on the merits of your case — was seriously flawed, for example a clear procedural failing under the School Admissions Appeals Code, that’s a process complaint, and it’s a genuinely different thing from disagreeing with the outcome. You raise this with the admission authority first, not by appealing again.

Maladministration specifically means a failure to follow the correct procedure, or a failure by the panel to act independently or fairly — and it has to have caused you a genuine injustice, not just been a technical slip that made no real difference to the outcome.

Where it goes: local authority schools

Where the admission authority is a local authority, maladministration complaints can ultimately go to the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman. The Ombudsman looks at how a decision was reached — whether the process was properly followed — not at whether the outcome itself was right. It isn’t a further review of your case on its merits.

The Ombudsman can only look at community, foundation, voluntary aided, voluntary controlled and nursery schools — the school types where a local authority is the admission authority. It cannot deal with complaints about academies, free schools, city technology colleges or independent schools, whatever the substance of the complaint; those go through the separate route below instead.

You should complain within 12 months of when you first knew about the problem, and you must have already been through the appeal itself first — the Ombudsman won’t investigate a complaint about a decision you haven’t yet appealed. Typical grounds the Ombudsman will actually consider: a mistake by the admission authority in how your application or refusal was handled, your appeal being conducted incorrectly, or the authority failing to arrange your appeal hearing within a reasonable time.

Where it goes: academies and free schools

Academies and free schools are their own admission authority, so the equivalent route for a process complaint about one of these is normally through the Education and Skills Funding Agency’s (ESFA) complaints process, not the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman. Check which type of school and admission authority applies to your case rather than assuming — see our full guide to the appeals process for how admission authorities differ.

This route has a considerably tighter deadline than the Ombudsman’s 12 months: a complaint about an academy appeal panel must be lodged with the ESFA within six months of the date of the appeal hearing itself. The ESFA investigates on behalf of the Secretary of State for Education where it considers there are sufficient grounds to do so — it isn’t automatic just because a complaint is submitted. GOV.UK provides a dedicated academy appeal panel complaint form for this route, separate from a general Department for Education complaint.

What this route isn’t

A process complaint doesn’t reopen the panel’s decision or give you a second hearing on the same facts — see our guide to what happens after a decision for the routes that do genuinely stay open, like the waiting list and in-year admissions.

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