Penalty Notices

CAPITA PENALTY NOTICE PORTAL - NOW LIVE

The portal has been introduced to provide a better experience for those requesting penalty notices, as well as providing Bradford Coucil with a more efficent way of managing requests, issuing notices, and recording when penalty notices have been paid.  Those submitting penalty notice requests via the portal will be able to view when their request has been authorised, provide any additional information/documentation that has been requested, see when a notice has been issued, and when a notice has been paid.

To enable your school to gain access to the portal, a member of staff from your school must complete this online form: https://forms.office.com/e/Hdza1wNnhW . Once the form has been completed, the person designated as leading the deployment of the portal to your school/setting will be invited to attend / view a webinar which demonstrates how the portal should be used (although anyone from the school can attend/view).  Once completed, they will be emailed login details.  The person leading on the portal within your school/setting is responsible for enabling access to other staff members within your school.

To login to the portal, please click on this link: Penalty Notice Portal .

If you are not sure if your school has access to the Penalty Portal, or if you are not sure who your Portal Lead is within your school, please contact the penalty notice team via PN@Bradford.gov.uk 

Feedback for Schools - Please ensure the following when making a request (Updated August 2025)

• New Letter Versions - Please use the updated letters that have now been made available on this webpage.  All letters have been reviewed in line with the Plain English Campaign to ensure that they are easy to read and to understand.  With this in mind, we would request that these letters are not edited, apart from where necessary - marked like <this>.  The letters we share with you are reviewed to ensure compliance with all legal expectations, including criminal law expectations.

• Sending Parents Letter - Schools are not expected to send these letters by first class post.  However we would ask that the method of distribution is clearly marked on the letter in place of the address block.  For example, if you send the letter to parent via email, please type LETTER SENT BY EMAIL, or if sent home with the child, mark the letter LETTER SENT HOME WITH CHILD.  Wherever possible, you should ensure that your method of distribution includes a way of showing that the letter was received, i.e. if sending the letter via Whatsapp, take a screenshot of the "Two Blue Ticks" to show that the message has been received and read. 

• Year 6 Leavers and End of Term unauthorised absence. We are working with the Penalty Notice Portal Developers to identify a solution to the issue of Year 6 Leavers who record unauthorised leave at the end of the academic year, and who can no longer be accessed at the start of the new academic year because they have moved to their secondary school.  The work around at the moment is as follows:

1. Process the request for leave from the parent as usual, deciding whether or not to authorise the absence, following up in writing with the school's decision.
2. Family take the period of leave, and do not return to the school before the end of the academic year.
3. At the start of the new academic year, the Primary School compiles the "Evidence Pack", consisting of the forms, letters, signed attendance certificate etc, creates a single PDF file (i.e. by printing, scanning and saving) or compressed ZIP file and emails this to the relevant person at the secondary school.
4. The secondary school then submits a penalty notice request.

If you are unsure as to who the relevant person is at the secondary school, please contact PN@bradford.gov.uk who can then provide you with the details of those at the secondary school with access to the PN Portal.

This method also applies to any child leaving your school, either at the end of the academic year, or during the year, as long as the school the child is moving to is a Bradford school.

• Extended Leave of Absence and Prosecutions.  Where we receive a request in relation to a period of leave of 20 school days, this request will automatically be escalated to a prosecution, no penalty notice will be issued.  If a school wishes for the matter to be dealt with via a penalty notice, please ensure this is clearer stated in the "Additional Information" section of the Penalty Notice Request.

• If a penalty notice is not paid, a prosecution results, and the parent pleas guilty...  In this situation, the headteacher and/or attendance lead MUST provide a statement to the court with information relevant to the situation.  Our prosecution team will support you with this, and it is not a complicated task, but we have had a very small number of issues with this recently.  If a school refuses to provide a statement, this undermines criminal procedure rules, and will leave us with no choice to refuse to undertake any school attendance enforcement tasks until the situation is resolved.

• When the council has asked for more information from a school about a request...  When we ask for more information to help us process a request for a penalty notice on behalf of a school, each member of staff with access to the portal will be notified by email.  We would ask that this request is responded to as soon as possible.

  We have a number of requests that have not been responded to, some dating as far back as October and November 2024.  During the end of term break, we deleted requests from the Autumn Term that have not been responded to.  This will then become a regular data cleansing exercise, so that unresponded requests for the Spring Term will be deleted during the Summer Holidays etc.

• Please read the Evidence Required part of the Penalty Notice Portal...  A number of requests we receive are not processed on the basis that the evidence we ask for (letters, attendance certificates, etc) are not uploaded to the request.  We have made some changes recently to what we ask for to try and make things easier.  Please read this section carefully, and add the required the documents.

• You are selecting the correct reason for the request.  There are two choices either:
  1. "Holiday Absences" - For absences due to unauthorised leaves of absences, marked in the attendance register using code "G"
  2. "Unauthorised Absences" - For absences due to sporadic unauthorised absence, marked in the attendance register using codes "O" or "U".

We are unable to edit the request reason, therefore the team has no choice but to reject your request, which we understand is frustrating, but avoidable.

• The addresses you are including for the parent are the most up to date.  We are encountering issues where leave of absence request forms are being completed by parents, who provide an address that is then not used by the school when submitting a penalty notice request.  We would also ask schools to ensure that you have a process in place for requesting updated details from parents on a regular basis, at least annually.  As well as being a safeguarding duty, it also reduces the number of issues we encounter with returned mail, and the courts revoking sentences due to parents providing evidence that they were not living at the address at the time.
• We can only issue penalty notices for children who have recorded absence when they are of compulsory school age.  A poor attendance offence is only committed when a child records an unauthorised absence when they are of compulsory school age.  A child is of compulsory school age (CSA) from the start of the term after their 5th birthday.  So for children who turn 5 between...
  • 1st September and 31st December, they become CSA at the start of the Spring Term
  • 1st January and the 31st March, they become CSA  at the start of the Summer Term
  • 1st April and 31st August, they become CSA at the start of the Autumn Term.
• The "Notice to Improve" and all other letters include a date of when the letter was issued, somewhere within the letter.  
• You are providing correct dates relating to when the period of poor attendance started and finished.  For leave during term time, the first date of absence will be the start date, and the last date of absence will be the end date.  For sporadic poor attendance requests, the dates you use must cover at least 10 school weeks.
• The attendance certificate is signed by the headteacher, it covers the period of poor attendance you are requesting the penalty notice request for, and all absences are coded correctly.  We are encountering issues where "N" codes (No Reason) are still visible on the attendance certificate.
• All relevant parents are included in the request.  We have had issues where we have received requests for siblings, but different parents have been listed.  If you are not sure, please include all parents, and provide more information in the "Additional Information" section so that we can help reach a decision on who should be included.  
• When responding to a "Request for Further Information", all questions have been answered.  We are receiving blank responses to requests for further information, which leads to the request entering a loop and not being actioned.
• When a request is declined, feedback is provided.  This can be found by entering the child's record on the portal, and scrolling to the bottom of the page where a list of previous requests can be found.  If you expand the request that was declined, you will find the reason for declining the request, together with all the information relating to that request.

Penalty Notice Portal Resources

A recording of a webinar demonstrating the portal is available below (click on the image), together with a copy of the slides (link below the image).

Slides - Penalty Notice Portal

Guide - Produced by MRI/Capita (Portal Developers)

LEGAL ACTION FOR EXTENDED UNAUTHORISED LEAVE DURING TERM TIME

We recognise that this is a significant issue for Bradford schools, with double the rate of absences due to unauthorised leave during term time being taken in Bradford compared to the national average.  In an effort to try and address this issue, we wanted to remind you that we can work together to utilise some of the other legal options available to us to try and get across the message of how important it is that children attend school regularly.

As a reminder, we will consider legal action through the magistrates court as opposed to penalty notices in cases where a continuous period of unauthorised leave of 20 school days (40 sessions) or more is taken during term time.  NB – A period of leave which spans across two half terms will be treated as one period of leave.

For the council to be able to consider this course the full range of legal options in these cases, schools need to:

1. Ensure that parents are aware of the possibility of legal action being sought for instances of extended leaves of absence, and that this information remains accessible at all times i.e. is reflected in any changes to the school’s attendance policy.
2. The relevant template letter is used when denying requests for leave during term time.
3. Submit a penalty notice request via the Penalty Notice Portal to the council once the child has returned to school.

Penalty Notices

We will continue to monitor the effectiveness of our legal options, and ensure that the decisions we make reflect those that have the biggest impact in improving school attendance.

Penalty notices are fines imposed as an alternative to the prosecution of parents for failing to ensure that their child of compulsory school age regularly attends the school where they are registered or at a place where alternative provision is provided.

The penalty is £160 if paid within 28 days of receipt, however a discounted rate of £80 will apply if the fine is paid within 21 days.  The payment must be paid direct to the local authority. The parents can only be prosecuted if 28 days have expired and full payment has not been made. There is no right of appeal by parents against a penalty notice. If the penalty is not paid in full by the end of the 28 day period, the local authority (City of Bradford Metropolitan District Council) must decide either to prosecute for the original offence to which the notice applies, or withdraw the notice.

Penalty notices can be issued to each parent liable for the attendance offence or offences. Penalty notices can be used where the pupil’s absence has not been authorised by the school.  Penalty Notices are issued to an individual parent of an individual child.  If the same individual parent receives a second penalty notice in relation to the same individual child within a 3 year period, they lose the ability to pay a discounted rate, and must pay £160 within 28 days to avoid being prosecuted for the offence.  Local Authorities can no longer issue a third penalty notice to the same individual parent for the same individual child within a 3 year period, parents will usually be prosecuted for the offence via the magistrates court.  

Penalty notices may also be issued where parents allow their child to be present in a public place during school hours without reasonable justification during the first five days of a fixed period or permanent exclusion.  The parents must have been notified by the school at the time of the exclusion of this and the days to which it applies.  In this situation, the penalty is £120 if paid within 28 days of receipt, however a discounted rate of £60 will apply if the fine is paid within 21 days.  There are no limits to the number of times an individual parent of an individual child may receive a penalty notice in this situation.

Bradford's Penalty Notice Code of Conduct for penalty notices can be downloaded here: Penalty Notice Code of Conduct

To ensure compliance with the Penalty Notice Code of Conduct, all schools must undertake the following:

School action prior to requesting the issuing of a Penalty Notice:

• The School’s Governing Body has endorsed the operation of the penalty notice scheme;  
• The School’s Attendance Policy clearly explains the criteria and process for addressing poor attendance, and the expectation is that all children should attend every day that the school is open except for sickness, unavoidable causes, religious holidays, or absences authorised by the school.  Ultimately, no sessions of unauthorised absence are acceptable, and where an exception may apply, the parent may be asked for evidence to collaborate this.  
• The School has fully considered any extenuating circumstances and has established there are no justified causes for the absences;  
• A written notice has been sent to parents informing them of the consideration to refer to the Local Authority to issue a penalty notice;
• While the Head teacher can delegate the authority to a member of staff to make penalty notice requests on their behalf, all referrals must be authorised by a member of the Senior Leadership Team to ensure that referrals are made in line with the code of conduct.  
• It is good practice to ensure that parents are reminded on an annual basis of the school’s policy on attendance, including the existence of Penalty Notices.

The next sections provide further information on the reasons why a penalty issue may be issued, the criteria that must be met, what happens next, and how you can request a penalty notice. 

Poor Attendance

UPDATE - 12th January 2026

Penalty Notice Portal – Notices to Improve (NTI)

I’ve mentioned previously that we were hoping to start issuing Notices to Improve (the old Penalty Notice Warning Letter) shortly.  Notices to Improve should be issued prior to a Penalty Notice being issued due to sporadic poor attendance (Not Leaves of Absence), providing the parents with 20 days / 4 weeks to improve attendance in order to avoid a penalty notice being issued.  MRI (the software developers) have released an update to the PN portal, making available this new feature.  If you have logged on to request a penalty notice for sporadic poor attendance, you may have already noticed the change to how the portal works, and some screenshots to show the difference are below…

Implementation Plan:

To make sure that we implement the change in a timely way, the following will apply for the first 4 weeks of the Spring term, up until Friday 30^th January 2026.

1. Schools can still submit penalty notice requests where a Notice to Improve has been issued up until 30/01/2026.  To do so, select “No” within the “Request a notice to improve” dropdown box, and then click “Start”.  You can complete the rest of the Penalty Notice Request Form as usual, providing details of the child, their family, the period of poor attendance and evidence of the support/challenge put in place by the school. 
2. Schools can now submit a Request for a Notice to Improve in relation to [sporadic] unauthorised absence.  To do so, select “Yes”  within the “Request a notice to improve” dropdown box, change the Period dropdown box to “4”,  and then click “Start”.  You will then complete the rest of the Penalty Notice Request Form as usual, providing details of the child, their family, the period of poor attendance and evidence of the support/challenge put in place by the school, but as you have not issued a Notice to Improve, you do not need to include this.  You can view notice to improve requests that you have submitted and those that we have sent/issued via the “Actions” drop down list, as shown in the screenshot below:

School then monitors the attendance for the 4 week monitoring period – the monitoring period starts from 2 days after the NTI was issued - the date the NTI was issued is visible on the child’s card without having to click into the record itself – see below.  If a PN is required because 2 or more sessions of unauthorised absence has been recorded during the monitoring period, then school submits a new PN request (as per point 1. above), but the request is streamlined, as you only need to “tick” the correct parents instead of entering their details again, and you only attach an updated, signed, attendance certificate, which will now include the additional 4 week monitoring period too.  We will have a record of all the documentation you sent as part of the NTI request, therefore please do not send it again.

From 30^th January 2026, we will no longer process PN requests where an NTI has not been requested via the PN portal first.

Criteria:

A pupil has 10 or more sessions of unauthorised absence in the 10 weeks (100 Sessions) prior to a notice being requested and their attendance has not been below 80% (20 sessions of absence) in the same 10 weeks (100 Sessions) prior to a notice being requested. 

Requests will not be considered where the request is made more than 6 weeks after the last session of unauthorised absence.

Penalty Notices for Poor Attendance are to be used as an early intervention tool to address low level absence concerns before the situation becomes entrenched.  Research conducted by the DfE found that penalty notices were most effective when used to address occasional absences where a child's rate of attendance started to fall below 90%.  We would encourage schools to make use of this tool, as quite often it's the Penalty Notice Warning Letter that can have the biggest impact in bringing a child's attendance rate back over 90%.

Penalty Notices for Poor Attendance should not be used to address entrenched levels of pupil attendance, as they will have little impact.  It is for this reason that Bradford Council will not accept poor attendance penalty notice requests where a child's rate of attendance is below below 80% in the last 10 weeks.  In these situations, schools are encouraged to apply Stage 2 of the Staged Intervention Approach to Attendance to try and address the situation.

More information on Penalty Notices for Poor Attendance is below:

Process:

1. Pupil's absence triggers school's criteria for poor attendance intervention (i.e. attendance falls below 95%).  School Letter 1 is issued making parent aware of concerns regarding the pupil's attendance. - Download Template
2. The pupil's poor attendance continues and unauthorised absence continues to be recorded.  The number of unauthorised absences is coming close to meeting Bradford's criteria for issuing a penalty notice.  School Letter 2 is issued making parent aware of this, and inviting them to an Attendance Support Meeting.  During the meeting, barriers to attendance should be discussed, an improvement plan agreed, and the parent(s) made aware that a penalty notice may be requested if further unauthorised absence occurs - Download Template Letter - Download Template Plan
3. As a minimum, the Attendance Support Meeting should take place within the 10 week period the penalty notice request relates to.
4. 10 sessions or more of unauthorised absence, but less than 20 sessions, over previous 10-week period - Notice to Improve Requested (Please see 12th January 2026 update above) attaching the Required Documentation (see below).
5. Further unauthorised absence is recorded.  Login to the Penalty Notice Portal (https://fpn.capitaone.cloud/) and submit a penalty notice request, attaching an updated Attendance Certificate signed by the Headteacher.
6. LA reviews request, issues Penalty Notice if criteria is met.

Consider:

• Has the parent been regularly contacted by the school to establish the reasons for absence or is there established parental non-engagement in response to phone calls, letters or invitations to school based meetings?
• Could there be underlying issues which need to be explored with the parents at the attendance support meeting to identify if any support is required?
• When parents are separated and do not live at the same address, establish how much involvement each parent has in caring for the child/ren. If one parent has little involvement, consider whether it is in the public or family’s interest to issue a fine to both parents.
• Parents/Adults over the age of 18 who live at the same address as the pupil will be equally responsible for the pupil's attendance and consideration should be given for requesting penalty notices for each individual adult.

Required documentation:

• A copy of a general absence letter (Letter 1), making parent aware of absences and consequences of continued unauthorised absence
• A copy of the Attendance Support Meeting Invite Letter (Letter 2), making parent aware of the continued unauthorised absences and inviting them to a meeting at the school.  Parents are also made aware that a penalty notice may be requested from, and issued by, Bradford Council should any further unauthorised absence occur.
• A copy of the Attendance Support Plan - If the parent fails to attend, please complete the plan without the parent present, ensuring that within the "Parent/Carer will" section a note is made that the parent was not present.  
• Attendance certificate for the entire current academic year, signed and dated by the headteacher. For requests submitted due to absence that occurred during the Autumn Term only, we also require an attendance certificate for the previous academic year too.
• Any additional evidence in relation to the absence ie letter from parent etc.  

Tips and Advice:

• All letters have been reviewed in line with the Plain English Campaign to ensure that they are easy to read and to understand.  With this in mind, we would request that these letters are not edited, apart from where necessary - marked like <this>.  The letters we share with you are reviewed to ensure compliance with all legal expectations, including criminal law expectations.

• Download the template letters above and upload them to your MIS system so that they can be easily mail merged and produced.

• Print off a list of all your children with attendance below 95% in the last 6 weeks.  Filter the list to leave you with those with at least 1 unauthorised absence, and remove those with attendance below 80% in the last 10 weeks.

• Issue Letter 1 to the parent/carers of all those on the list.

• Continue to review the attendance of those children identified.  Should 7-8 unauthorised absences be recorded in a 8 week period, issue Letter 2, meet with the family and complete an Attendance Support Plan.

• Should the criteria of 10 unauthorised absences in the last 10 weeks be met and the Attendance Support Meeting took place during this period, issue a Notice to Improve.

• Should further unauthorised absence be recorded after the meeting took place, request a penalty notice via the Penalty Notice Portal.

Downloads:

1. Letter 1 - Updated August 2025
2. Letter 2 - Updated August 2025
3. Attendance Support Plan Template
4. Notice to Improve (No longer required from January 2026 if a request for a Notice to Improve is submitted via the PN Portal)

Unauthorised Leave of Absence during term time:

Criteria:
A leave of absence of five days (10 sessions) or more was taken during term time without the school’s consent in the 6 weeks prior to a notice being requested.

Process:

1. Parent completes school's Leave of Absence Request form;
2. Headteacher (or delegated person) considers every application individually and decides that "exceptional circumstances" are not present; 
3. Parent is notified in writing that the leave of absence request has been refused, detailing the reasons why, and the consequences should the leave be taken, including the requesting of a penalty notice from Bradford Council; - Download Template Letter
4. Parent continues to take the pupil out of school during term time, and unauthorised absence is recorded;
5. Login to the Penalty Notice Portal (https://fpn.capitaone.cloud/) and submit a penalty notice request, attaching the Required Documentation (see below).
6. Penalty Notice is issued.

Consider:

• The family’s circumstances and the likely benefits to the child and family of the period of leave, taking into account social, emotional and cultural reasons;

• The likely detrimental impact on the child’s social, emotional and intellectual development, attainment level and any SEN of the taking of a period of leave.

• Meeting parents to explore exceptional circumstances such as bereavement, funerals abroad, unavoidable cause (illness/flight delays) to determine the reasonableness of delay to return and allow parents the opportunity to provide appropriate evidence. This is to reduce the need for subsequent Local Authority Penalty Notice withdrawals based on retrospective evidence;

• Siblings in other Bradford schools. Liaise with other schools in individual cases to agree a consistent approach in considering term time holiday requests and penalty notices;

• The child’s previous attendance record;

• Consider exceptional circumstances put forward by the parent, explicitly setting out considerations taken by the school in a letter to the parent confirming when requests are unauthorised.

• The Local Authority advises schools that no leave of absence should be authorised for children unless exceptional circumstances apply.

Notices can be issued without warning where schools can show that a leave of absence was taken during term time without the consent of the Head Teacher and the parent was made aware in writing of the decision to unauthorise the period of absence, the reasons why (including details of any evidence), and the possible consequences, including the issuing of a penalty notice. 

Required Documentation:

• Term-time leave request submitted by Parent;
• A refusal of leave letter from the school outlining:
  • the exceptional circumstances the school has considered;
  • setting out the reasons for refusal;
  • A statement regarding the consequences of taking an unauthorised holiday, including the issuing of a penalty notice if a pupil continues to be absent during this period.
• OR a retrospective refusal of leave letter from the school outlining the same as above, but including details of how the school has reached the assumption that the child has taken an unauthorised leave of absence;
• Attendance certificate covering the unauthorised leave period only.  This should be signed and dated by the head teacher.
• Any additional evidence in relation to the absence ie letter from parent etc. 
• NB - All letters have been reviewed in line with the Plain English Campaign to ensure that they are easy to read and to understand.  With this in mind, we would request that these letters are not edited, apart from where necessary - marked like <this>.  The letters we share with you are reviewed to ensure compliance with all legal expectations, including criminal law expectations.

Downloads:

1. Refusal of Leave Letter - Updated December 2025
2. Retrospective Refusal of Leave - Reasons Known - Updated December 2025
3. Retrospective Refusal of Leave - Reasons Unknown - Updated December 2025

Excluded Pupil found in a public place

Criteria:

A pupil is found unsupervised in a public place during school hours during the first 5 days of exclusion without good reason.

Consider:

The "Good Reason" - this might include attendance at a medical appointment, YOT appointment or other appointment with a statutory or voluntary agency.

Required Documentation:

• A fully completed Poor Attendance Referral Form
• A copy of exclusion letter sent to the parent in relation to the child.  The letter must include a statement notifying the parent of their responsibilities during the first 5 days of the exclusion together with the consequences of non-compliance, including the issuing of a penalty notice if the child is seen in a public place during the first 5 days of an exclusion.
• Attendance certificate demonstrating that the child was absent due to an exclusion during the day in question.
• A written statement(s) from the witness(es) documenting their account in relation to seeing the child in public.  The statement must include details of the location, date and time that the child was seen, and how the witness knew / recognised the child.  Statement must also state that the witness is happy to appear in court if necessary to provide their account in front of the Magistrates.
• Supporting evidence, including any photographic / video footage of the child present in a public place ie CCTV.

Please email all requests to attlegal@bradford.gov.uk. If a penalty notice remains unpaid, a witness statement must be provided by a member of staff from with the School or Attendance Management Service and/or a Police Officer/Community Support Officer who stopped the excluded pupil in a public place during school hours.

Frequently Asked Questions

What Period of Absence do I request a Penalty Notice for?

For Unauthorised Leave of Absence Penalty Notice requests, the dates you need to include would be the start and end dates of the leave period, the period which is coded as “G” on the attendance certificate.  Remember, you must submit the request within 6 weeks of the last date of the unauthorised leave of absence. So for example, if the child was absent from school between Monday 6th January and Friday 10th January, you would enter the start date as "05/01/2025" and the end date as "10/01/2025".  If the period of absence spans a school holiday, then you would include this period in your request - For example child was absent from school on Monday 16th December, and didn't return until Monday 13th January, you would enter the start date as "16/12/2024" and the end date as "13/01/2025".

For Poor Attendance Penalty Notices, the period you would need to include must be 10 weeks (100 sessions) long, and include 10 to 20 sessions of unauthorised absences.  

For Excluded pupils, you only need to state the date that the pupil was seen in a public place.

These dates are important as it informs us of the period of absence you are concerned about, as well as ensuring that the letters that have been issued align themselves to the period of absence you are concerned about.

Can you tell me more about the letters I should be including in the request for a penalty notice for Poor Attendance?

We require a minimum of three letters to be issued and a meeting attempted with the parent(s).  One letter should make the family aware of the absences and offering support, a second challenging the parent, informing them of continued concerns, inviting them to attend an attendance support meeting, and the third letter, the Notice To Improve, letting them know that further unauthorised absence could lead to a request to Bradford Council for further action, including the possibility of a fine being issued. 

Whilst the first and second letter can be issued at any point during the academic year, the Attendance Support Meeting should take place during the 10-week period of absence the penalty notice is being requested for, and the "Notice To Improve" should be issued once the threshold of 10 unauthorised absences in 10 weeks has been met.  This demonstrates that the parent was informed of the possible consequences of poor attendance, but the child has continued to record unauthorised absence.  However if the Notice to Improve has been issued, no further unauthorised absence occurs and a school submits a request, the request will be returned and no further action taken.  

Example letters have been made available to download in the previous section.

Talking about Letters, what about letters for Leave during term time?

All schools should have in place some kind of Notification of Leave of Absence form that parents can be given to complete and sign.  As well as basic parent and child details, the parent should also be asked:  

• Reasons/Explanation for the leave request
• Destination(s) whilst on leave
• Last Day / Return Date
• Sibling(s) also on trip
• Parent(s) also on trip  

All requests for leave made by parents should be responded to via a separate letter, confirming their application, the reasons for the leave and the days that permission for absence have been requested for.  Where an application is refused, the letter must demonstrate that the parent’s individual circumstances have been considered, and that the Headteacher (or person with delegated authority) does not believe that exceptional circumstances exists.  

It is not acceptable for just the request form to be returned, signed by a member of staff with a short sentence at the bottom of the form saying the leave request has not been accepted. A letter must be sent evidencing that consideration for the request has been given and that the explanation given does not meet the schools threshold of an exceptional circumstance.  

If a child is absent for a period of time, but the school becomes aware either during the absence or afterwards that the leave was actually a leave of absence that would have been unauthorised had a request for leave been made, then a penalty notice can still be requested from Bradford Council.  In this situation, the school should write to the parent providing details of why they believe the child was absent from school, why the absence is now considered an unauthorised leave of absence, that the matter is now being passed to Bradford Council, and that a Penalty Notice may be issued. 

Do we need to attach a completed PN Request Form (word document) when submitting a PN request through the portal.

No, the information you are entering into the portal when completing a request has replaced the need to complete the old PN Request form.  Everything you need to attach is listed for you as part of the submission process.

I have forgotten to attach a document or attached the wrong document; do I need to withdraw the request?

No, you are able to edit the request you have submitted yourself via the PN portal, up until the point that the council issues the penalty notice.  To do this, simply click into the child's record on the portal, and press the "Edit" button at the bottom right of the page.  if the penalty notice has been issued and you can no longer edit the child's record, you contact the team via PN@bradford.gov.uk and provide the child’s name and year group, we will either submit a “Request for Information” back to you, allowing you to add the new document, or ask you to email the document to us directly.

I have a family that has gone away on an unauthorised leave of absence again, but I can’t request a second penalty notice.

This is because only one penalty notice request for a child can be active at any one time, at present you would have to wait for the first PN to be paid, or for the 28 days to have passed without payment being made.  We have made the developers aware of this, and they are looking at a solution.  In the meantime, you will need to wait for the 1^st request to have been “completed” before you can request a 2^nd PN.

I want to give other people in the school access to the portal, do I contact the council to arrange this?

No.  Each school has a lead person who is responsible for rolling out access to other members of staff.  The September webinar/slides talks you through this - https://bso.bradford.gov.uk/content/penalty-notices-august24  If you’re not sure who your lead person is for your school, contact PN@bradford.gov.uk

A penalty notice has been issued to a parent, and they have then contacted me/colleagues at the school appealing the penalty notice, what should we do?

This is a common occurance, and what a school should do really depends on the reasons why the parent is appealing the issuing of a penalty notice.  Firstly, it's important to clarify that there is no statutory right of the parent to appeal a penalty notice that has been issued regarding unauthorised absence / exclusion.  However, if the parent feels that the absence should have been authorised, and can provide satisfactory evidence to substantiate their claim, then this should be considered, and the decision to unauthorise the absence reconsidered.  Only the headteacher has the power to authorise/unauthorise an absence (or someone delegated to do so).  If the decision is made to authorise the absence, we should be notified via the PN Portal that you wish to withdraw the penalty notice, giving the reason "Should not have been issued", the council will then issue the parent with a letter and withdraw the PN.

If the parent contacts the council directly. we will usually advise the parent to contact the school to discuss this, as we are unable to change an absence from unauthorised to authorised, and until that happens, the penalty notice has been correctly issued.

Due to the huge volume of calls and emails we are receiving in relation to penalty notices from parents, we have introduced a new way for parents to contact the team, using an Online Contact Form.  Please do not share the phone numbers/email addresses of the team.  The contact form is accessible via bradford.gov.uk/schoolpenaltynotices, the details of which we also provide in the penalty notice, together with a QR code they can use to visit the page on their mobile phone.

I'm not too sure which adults to include in the Penalty Notice Request, who should I include?

Section 576 of the Education Act defines a parent as any person:

(a)who is not a parent of theirs but who has parental responsibility for them, or

(b)who has care of them,

This means that anyone who has a caring responsiblity for child, no matter how little, is considered to be a parent, as well as anyone with "PR".  Penalty Notices for a period of absence or exclusion can therefore be issued to anyone who meets this definition.  We are coming across situations where penalty notices are only being issued for one parent where the child lives with two parents, which means that there are some inconsistencies in the issuing of penalty notices in Bradford.  If you are not sure who to include, include everyone, and provide a summary of their caring responsibilties for the child within the "Additional Information" section of the penalty notice request, we will then review and consider the appropriateness of issuing penalty notices to the adults listed.