School holidays row: Isle of Wight man loses legal fight over daughter's absence

Jon Platt took his fight to the supreme court but has been found guilty of failing to secure his daughter’s regular attendance at school. Photograph: Dominic Lipinski/PA

A father who took his child out of school for a holiday during term time, sparking a long-running legal fight, has been found guilty of failing to secure her regular attendance.

Jon Platt’s campaign had previously gone all the way from Isle of Wight magistrates court to defeat at the supreme court, at a cost of nearly £140,000 to the public purse, and his latest disappointment came in a hearing back at the same magistrates court on Friday.

“This has gone on far too long and far too much money has been spent on it by me and the taxpayer,” he told reporters after the hearing, adding his relief that it was over. Platt was given a 12-month conditional discharge and ordered to pay £2,000 costs and a £20 surcharge.

He was originally taken to court over a refusal to pay a £120 penalty for taking his daughter on the unauthorised holiday to Disney World in Florida in 2015. Local magistrates found there was no case to answer and two high court judges upheld their decision, saying Platt had not acted unlawfully because his daughter had a good attendance record.

But the supreme court disagreed in April, saying that the definition of failure to attend regularly was not in an “evenly spaced” manner or “sufficiently often”, but “in accordance with the attendance rules”.

Giving her judgment on Friday, magistrate Jeannie Walker said: “The circumstances of this case fall squarely into that breach of school rules,” adding that the council had “proved beyond reasonable doubt that the child was not attending school regularly on those dates of the holiday”.

Summing up his case, Isle of Wight council’s lawyer Ben Rich had cited the supreme court’s decision.

Platt’s lawyer, Paul Greatorex QC, argued that the prosecution had not “produced any evidence as to what the school rules are. There’s nothing in writing. What are the school rules? Who knows? They are not there.”

The court had previously heard that the case should be thrown out, as Platt’s lawyers argued that pursuing legal action against him amounted to an “abuse of process”. They said Platt had been told his daughter’s attendance was satisfactory and that he had not seen documents setting out a new school policy in which term-time holidays were no longer allowed.

But the lawyer for Isle of Wight council argued that the school was not required to make sure that every letter sent home was read, and that the council’s code of conduct had also made it plain that a penalty notice could be issued for a term-time holiday.

Before Friday’s ruling, it was revealed that the government had spent £139,891.93 up to 10 May on fighting Platt in court. A freedom of information request by the Press Association revealed that the Department for Education spent £53,655 on high court and supreme court cases and reimbursed Isle of Wight council £86,237, including £14,631 to cover Platt’s high court costs, which the council had been ordered to cover.

Platt said he had spent close to £30,000 on fighting the case, with additional funds covered by legal aid. He said the case would have implications for parents around the country.

“There were around 8.5m unauthorised absences around the country in a single term. Every single one of those is, if the headteacher decided that’s what the school rules should be, an unauthorised breach; all 8.5m of those are criminal offences.”