See answers to previous information requests

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.
Yes, Wokingham Borough Council has established procedures to detect and prevent fraudulent school admission applications. These measures are designed to ensure that school places are allocated fairly and in accordance with the Council's admission policies (which can be found on our website). We continually refine and enhance our existing processes to detect and prevent fraudulent school admission applications. It is our view that providing detailed information on our fraud detection methods would undermine their effectiveness and pose a risk to the integrity of the admissions process.

The Council is applying Section 30(1)(a) and (b) to this request. Sharing specific details about the process could enable individuals to find ways to bypass detection. This would undermine the effectiveness of our safeguards and could lead to fraudulent submissions going undetected, ultimately compromising the integrity of the system and potentially resulting in legitimate applications being rejected.

2. How many applications have you investigated on suspicion of being fraudulent in the past three academic years? (2023-24 / 2022-23 / 2021-22)
Wokingham Borough Council does not maintain a formal record of the number of applications identified as fraudulent.

3. How many of these applications were found to be fraudulent? Please break this figure down by primary/secondary schools, if this is possible.
Wokingham Borough Council does not maintain a formal record of the number of applications identified as fraudulent.

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.)
Wokingham Borough Council does not maintain a formal record of the number of applications identified as fraudulent, nor does it have the capability to extract specific case details from the system, including the nature of the offence, the school involved, or the outcome of the investigation.

5. Overall, how many fraudulent applications for each year were
a) Not accepted?
b) Resulted in a child being removed from school after application found to be fraudulent?
Wokingham Borough Council does not maintain a formal record of the number of applications identified as fraudulent.

6. Please include the number of fraudulent applications that led to appeals by parents, and the number of appeals that won.
Zero.

7. Did any of these offences result in prosecution? If so, please provide details.
No. In general, cases of potentially fraudulent applications are identified at an early stage and addressed before any escalation or the issuance of a school place offer.