Sandy Parts,
It's not sufficient these days to simply tick a box and sign a form. These bodies now 'need' additional and verifiable proof that you are entitled to these services (in this case primary education). The fact that one could scan a completely fabricated Passport to them (which they admitted they can't check with IPS or UKBA), but that would satisfy their 'need'.
But I go back to my earlier point, why should be obliged to tell fibs to have a service delivered that we are ordinarily entitled to but (in this case) the local authority are being completely anal about?
Several years ago we became friendly with the Chief Executive and his wife of a Borough Council near our family home, as our daughters went to school together. The chap was extremely well educated and had worked in Local and Central Government etc before landing a CE role with a 'strategically important' borough council. However, his knowledge of the forces was approaching nil. He assumed I was ‘army’ (in spite of advising him otherwise) and was bought into the received wisdom/urban myth of that when we took an overseas posting that we paid no tax, housing was free (well, to be true, it is for some of us) etc etc. His sole exposure to the Military was attending various Remembrance parades when a motley collection of TA and cadets would trundle past the podium, where he would be propping up the mayor. Accordingly – I suspect that this is the same for many local authorities - they simply have no idea about ‘the military’ and what it entails for SP and their families. No amounts of diktats from Government - Covenant notwithstanding – will change these ideas. Illustrative of this approach, if you were to examine the ‘fair access protocols’ produced by local authorities for school admission, you would see that the children of SP are lumped in with asylum seekers, refugees, wards of the courts, children released from the criminal justice system and members of the Romany and Traveller communities.
Last edited by Whenurhappy; 11th Jun 2013 at 13:43.