Families in St Albans feel let down by the county council to provide their children with a primary school place of their choice.

A total of 63 families are feeling disappointed with Hertfordshire County Council after they failed to provide their child with a primary school place from one of their four ranked and chosen schools.

The parents have now united to form an action group, Permanent Expansion of Reception Places in Central St Albans, to canvass the county council to provide their children with a place at one of their chosen primary schools.

The families who live in St Albans and the surrounding areas have instead been offered a school place for their child miles from their home in a school which parents did not choose.

Chrissie Blake, a parent and spokesman for the action group, said: “We feel that this provision of school places in unreasonable and unfair and feel let down by Hertfordshire County Council – as our four school choices were informed and made for many reasons right for our child and family.

“This choice has been ignored as Hertfordshire County Council failed to take preventative measures to manage this situation which was clearly flagged by parents in advance.

“In addition, the distance to the offered school place is over the statutory walking distance of two miles.

“This coupled with the travel time and inability to get there due to lack of transport of parent’s own work commitments and commute, not offering the same facilities as our chosen schools, mainly pre and after school care, and not being part of our local community makes the school place offered completely untenable for our children.”

The main area affected by the lack of school places in St Albans is those living south of London Road and near the station where St Peter’s Primary School is their nearest school.

The school is only one form entry – 30 places – and coupled with a sibling intake makes it hard for children to get a place.

Although Hertfordshire County Council has announced 30 additional reception places at Maple primary School, the action group is concerned this will not go far enough to help with the shortfall of places, in particular for those families in the affected area.

The action group has approached the county council with a number of possible solutions while remaining on ‘continuing interest lists’ for their four chosen schools and appealing the school place they have been offered due to it being unreasonable for their children.

Chris Ashcroft, another affected parents, said: “We are urging Hertfordshire County Council to rebalance the ‘continuing interest’ process to give their families that received unranked schools top priority on the ‘continuing interest lists’ and also to offer them the additional 30 places at Maple is they are within the statutory distance and already have Maple listed as a school choice.

“We continue to press Hertfordshire County Council to put an additional reception class at St Peter’s Primary School, to fulfil the high demand for reception places in the area.”

To push for permanent expansion to primary school provision in the area the group have launched an online petition, which went live on April 26 and has more than 150 signatures.

The petition can be found on the county council’s website and is called ‘long-term solution required for primary school provision in central St Albans’.