THREE families are celebrating a court victory over Swindon Borough Council after being prosecuted for taking their children out of school in term time.

All three were cleared by Salisbury magistrates on Monday after a seven month legal battle.

A 28-year-old single mother from Swindon described the experience as an ‘emotional rollercoaster’ and urged other families in a similar situation to ‘stand up for themselves’.

She said: “I am absolutely over the moon. I was shaking and crying, but we got the result we wanted in the end. Being in court was awful. I was absolutely petrified.”

She took her son out of school for four and a half days in the week before half-term for an unauthorised family holiday. As a result, the council issued her with a fine, which she disputed.

“They need to look at the overall picture,” she said.

“My son had 96.5 per cent attendance but they still claimed it wasn’t regular enough. There are so many children out there with far worse attendance and their parents don’t get fined.

“I’m just a single parent who wanted to give my son a holiday. We don’t have one every year and if I can only afford to do it in term time then I have to do what’s best for my family.”

One of the other parents involved in the case, a 31-year-old father, said he was astonished the case had even made it to court.

“It’s not nice being called a criminal,” he said.

“All we want to do as parents is do the right thing by our children and sometimes the best thing for a family is to have a holiday.

“At no point did we fail to keep our children in regular attendance, but the Government needs to be clearer about what regular attendance actually means.”

The story comes after a landmark case in May which saw Jon Platt, from the Isle of Wight, claim victory in the High Court after he was prosecuted for taking his six-year-old daughter out of school for a family trip to Florida without permission from his child’s school.

Mr Platt said his victory would benefit hundreds of other parents facing similar penalties and he has since backed other families in the same situation. The Swindon father claimed to have been inspired by his example.

Speaking about Monday’s cases in Salisbury, Mr Platt said: “It seems to me that local authorities like Swindon will only stop these outrageous prosecutions if we name and shame them.

“The children in these cases had very high attendance, higher than my daughter’s. These cases should never have been anywhere near a court – shame on Swindon Council for pursuing them.”

But Swindon Borough Council hit back, defending its decision to go ahead with the prosecutions.

A council spokesman said: “We are disappointed with the outcome of the court hearings. All of the parents, whose children are unrelated and at different schools, removed their children from school for the week before half-term for an unauthorised family holiday.

"The children’s attendance was considered within a 12-week period and found to be 91 per cent and the court has ruled that this did not constitute irregular attendance.

“Following the High Court decision in the Isle of Wight v Platt case earlier this year the council revised the period in which absences are considered. The period of absence is now considered within a 12-week period, ending with the date when the school refer the matter to the council’s education welfare team.

“Although the magistrates in the Isle of Wight case looked over an academic year, the High Court judgment did not set out that this was the period in which local authorities had to consider absences.

“Due to the time limits imposed by the court for taking action in these cases it is not possible for the local authority to consider every period of absence within the context of a whole academic year.

“The council considered the case law available and felt that 12 weeks was in line with those decisions and, more importantly, felt that it was a time period that could be applied equally to all parents to ensure consistency and fairness while complying with the court time limits. We are pleased that the magistrates hearing the matters yesterday agreed with this approach.

“We issue penalty notices for unauthorised absence on behalf of schools and only do so after we have given careful consideration to the facts of each individual case as we need to be satisfied there is sufficient evidence an offence has been committed. Given the outcomes of yesterday’s cases we will need to reconsider the instances in which penalty notices will be issued and further guidance will be made available in due course.”

The council also came in for criticism from the Labour Party, which accused it of wasting time and taxpayers’ money.

The leader of the Labour group, Coun Jim Grant, said: “This is yet another failure of Swindon Borough Council, at a significant expense to the Swindon taxpayer.

“When the council should be focussing its resources on delivering value for money services to the Swindon public, they are wasting time, money and effort on a court case they should clearly have never fought.

“I would like to send my congratulations to the families for fighting for what they thought was right.”

The Swindon Advertiser has been gagged from disclosing the identity of two of the families due to a court order, despite their own willingness to speak out.