Leeds council apologise after scheduled maintenance left parents unable to see primary school offers

Many parents across the city were left frustrated by the issues with the council's online schools portal when trying to find out their child's primary school place.

- > Leeds parents unable to see their child's primary school offer after council website crashes

The council's website stated parents would receive their offer letter as an email attachment.

Instead they were sent a link to an online portal they could not log in to.

Hundreds of comments on the council's social media stated people were unable to find out which school their child had been offered a place at.

In a statement, the council have explained that maintenance on the servers for the schools portal was taken out on Tuesday morning.

The council’s digital and information service carry out regular updates of thousands of computer servers to protect them from cyber-attack.

This work can result in servers being unavailable and is done out of hours to avoid disruption.

However many nervous parents had been trying to log on since the early hours of Tuesday, April 16 which resulted in frustration when they could not access it.

Steve Walker, director of children and families said: “I would like to apologise for the fact that some parents were unable to access the online portal for primary school admissions this morning.

“I have looked into this issue and it would appear that maintenance was carried out on the computer servers that underpin the schools portal.

“This maintenance should not have taken place on these servers during such an important time for parents, and I can only apologise for the frustration and inconvenience this has caused.

“The site is now live again and we will be monitoring it throughout the day to ensure there are no further problems.”