The Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill - Find a freedom of information request

The Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill is due to give local authorities greater powers to prevent good/popular schools from expanding, on the grounds that such expansion would undermine bad/unpopular schools - which might cease to be viable and have to close. This would be via the mechanism of setting a "published admissions number" PAN for each school.



Details of the proposals can be found here:

https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-10165/



1) Please advise if your local authority has made any decision on whether you would be willing to contemplate using such powers in the event of this legislation being enacted and if so what that decision is.



2) Please also provide a copy of any submission you have made to the Department of Education regarding this proposal and copies of any email correspondence within your Council regarding the matter.

I can confirm that the information requested is held by Lincolnshire County Council (LCC). I have detailed below the information that is being released to you.  

1) At present, the Local Authority can only refer a case to the Schools Adjudicator with a decreased PAN, however this is to be extended to where a PAN (Published Admission Number) is the same, reduced or increased and gives the schools adjudicator the power to set a schools PAN, rather than upholding an objection. We cannot anticipate at this time whether what actions we would take regarding a schools PAN, as each case has individual circumstances however, we aim to work with schools to set appropriate PAN's and would only take such an action as a last resort. It is notable that the power only permits the Local Authority to refer the case to the Schools Adjudicator, and does not affect the powers the Local Authority has to directly set the schools PAN. In line with the proposal, we will work collaboratively with schools to discharge the Local Authority place planning function and will continue to do so.

2) LCC have not formally made any submissions to the DFE regarding this. As the proposed bill spans many areas. It would not be possible to collate all emails regarding the matter in the 18 hours allocated under section 12(1) of the FOI Act 2000 

Section 12(1) of the Freedom of Information 2000 does not oblige a public authority to comply with a request for information if the authority estimates that the cost of complying with the request would exceed the appropriate limit. The appropriate limit is currently £450 or 18 hours at a cost of £25 per hour.

The exemption under section 12 is not subject to the public interest test

Any refined request will be treated as a new request under the Freedom of Information Act