The proportion of parents in Hertfordshire winning an appeal over their child's selected school fell last year.

Department for Education data shows in Hertfordshire, parents took 725 cases against their child’s school placement for the 2020-21 academic year to an appeal hearing, with 131 successful – a win rate of 18%.

The success rate was down from the year before, when it was 22%, and lower than the national average of 19%.

Parents are facing a postcode lottery for appeals across England, the figures show, with wide variation in success rates between local authorities.

In the North East’s County Durham, the rate was 48%,while in the London borough of Kensington, just 3% of appeals were won.

Founder of law firm schoolappeals.com Matt Richards explained that the urban landscape of an area could be a factor in the variation in success rates.

He said cases in urbanised areas of London were more likely to feature parents simply wanting their child to be placed in a better school, but in rural areas with schools more than five miles apart, it could be down to logistical reasons.

Schools follow the Government's admission code when deciding which pupils to allocate places to each year.

When a parent is unhappy about an allocation, such as not achieving their first-place preference, an appeal can be submitted to the school's admissions authority.

That can go to an independent appeal panel which then assesses whether the school was right to turn down the application.

In Hertfordshire, 83% of pupil applicants were offered a first-choice school place last year.

Of the outcomes, parents of secondary school-age pupils were more likely to win than those of primary school pupils, with a success rate of 23% compared to 6%.

The Department for Education said measures were put in place to let parents appeal during the pandemic.

A spokesperson for the Local Government Association said: "Every child should have a fair chance of getting into their parents’ preferred school and councils and schools work extremely hard to try and ensure that as many pupils as possible are allocated their first preference.”