School parents may sue councils for bad advice on term-time trips

PARENTS who face fines for taking children on term-time holidays are to launch a legal class action against the councils who misled them, a law firm has revealed.

Solicitors at Simpson Millar told The Daily Telegraph they are preparing a group law suit against local authorities who allegedly issued misleading guidance to parents which seemed to say it was permissible to take children out of school without headteacher approval.

The disclosure comes days after the Supreme Court ruled that parents cannot take children on term-time holiday without the school’s authorisation, regardless of previous good attendance.

That decision had seemed to conclude a two-year legal battle between businessman Jon Platt and the Isle of Wight Council, after he refused to pay a £120 fine for taking his six-year-old daughter to Disneyland Florida.

During Mr Platt’s case, as many as 28 education authorities relaxed their truancy policy – despite explicit requests from central government not to do so – with several telling parents they would not be prosecuted so long as the child’s attendance was above a given threshold.

Now those authorities are reviewing their policies to reflect the Supreme Court ruling, meaning parents who were told last year that they could book term-time holidays, may now be prosecuted for taking them.

The councils involved said they had not intended to mislead and were now reviewing their guidance pending Department for Education clarification.

They include Wakefield council, which said that 85 per cent attendance would be considered “regular”; Trafford, which permitted 90 per cent, and Derbyshire county council, which said it would accept 94 per cent. Patrick Campbell, of Simpson Millar, said parents now faced being “punished retrospectively”, adding councils had left the door open to a wave of legal actions.

“This has created an unfair situation for parents who have sought guidance from their local authority and have relied on that guidance, only to be subsequently told that they could now be prosecuted,” he added.

“We have been contacted by a number of parents and are looking into a potential class action.”

Additional reporting by Luke Mintz