Penalty Notice - Issuing Guidance (September 2025)

The Hampshire Code of Conduct for issuing Penalty Notices sets out the principles for issuing penalty notices in relation to school attendance.  It ensures that notices are applied consistently and fairly across local authorities, used appropriately as an alternative to prosecution and administered transparently with clear procedures and thresholds.  The guidance has been updated September 2025 with the following:

For pupils who have been absent for less than 10 unauthorised sessions, a Penalty Notice may be applicable in some circumstances.

i) Where a parent is repeatedly keeping a child from school for family events or special occasions, despite having been warned to stop this

ii) Where a parent is taking a term time holiday but has deliberately attempted to avoid the issuing of a Penalty Notice by only declaring 8 sessions on a Leave of Absence Form or is taking the holiday during the week of an INSET so only 6–8 sessions of unauthorised holiday are recorded.

A fixed penalty notice will be issued once the national threshold has been met and can be issued for term time leave or irregular attendance/punctuality. The threshold is 10 sessions of unauthorised absence in a rolling period of 10 school weeks. A school week means any week in which there is at least one school session. This can be met with any combination of unauthorised absence (e.g. 4 sessions of holiday taken in term time plus 6 sessions of arriving late after the register closes all within 10 school weeks). These sessions can be consecutive (e.g. 10 sessions of holiday in one week) or not (e.g. 6 sessions of unauthorised absence taken in 1 week and 1 per week for the next 4 weeks). The period of 10 school weeks can also span different terms or school years (e.g. 2 sessions of unauthorised absence in the Summer Term and a further 8 within the Autumn Term).

Exceptional circumstances: All schools can grant a leave of absence for exceptional circumstances at their discretion. Generally, the DfE does not consider a need or desire for a holiday or other absence for the purpose of leisure and recreation to be an exceptional circumstance.

To see Hampshire's guidance for penalty notices, please click here