Crawley's Romesh Ranganathan criticises county council after youngest son refused school place

Ranganathan, well known as a panellist on A League of Their Own, said he emailed the county council six times after his son was allocated to a school some distance from his Crawley home, with no response.

It comes after West Sussex County Council celebrated offering over 91 per cent of families their preferred primary school earlier this week,with 96.9 per cent being offered one of their top three choices.

A council spokesperson told the BBC that they cannot comment on individual cases like Ranganathan’s, but acknowledged the comedian’s disappointment. "We will always work with families to ensure a suitable school placement can be found,” they said.

Ranganathan says his other sons already attend the school he had picked as his first choice. He said: “I wait two weeks, they come back and say, 'West Sussex has looked into it. They can't do anything. They have conducted an investigation of their placement procedure and they found it to be satisfactory'.

"I bet they have. Then he said to me, 'I'm sure it's disappointing'. It's more than disappointing. It's not the football, it's my son's school placement."

He later told the BBC he wasn’t sure how he was going to get his children to school at the same time, given their schools are so far away.

"They didn't give us any of our preferred schools. Instead they put us in a school that wasn't any of our preferences and is the other side of town."

"We've got two kids who are being educated on one side of town, and another who is being educated at the other. Short of putting one of them in a cab, I don't know how it works."