Legacy .sch.uk domains

[CHiLL]

The primary school I inherited underwent an amalgamation in 2023 between two local primaries. However, it's left the domains in a weird state.

 

Original Primary School 1: SchoolA (schoola.bham.sch.uk) - DFE number ABC123

Original Primary School 2: SchoolB (schoolb.bham.sch.uk) - DFE number XYZ789

New Primary School : SchoolZ (schoolz.bham.sch.uk) - DFE number XYZ789

 

School 1 was completely shut down and school B was rebranded as school Z, operating across both sites and keeping the DFE number.

 

I have full access over SchoolZ and have moved the DNS and domain registrar away from EXA to Cloudflare and Nominet respectively.

In our M365 tenant, I can see both SchoolZ and SchoolB listed as domains, with SchoolZ being the default domain. I am presuming that SchoolB was left as a legacy domain for email aliasing. However, we have no emails or domains using schoolb.bham.sch.uk and I cannot complete the domain ownership with Nominet as the domain doesn't truly exist, the school name doesn't exist and we have no emails for it.

I have no access to schoola.bham.sch.uk and EXA confirmed that the school requested a transfer of the registrar to Nominet in 2023. The domain is now inaccessible and Nominet have clarified that the domain isn't registered. I am unsure why SchoolB was kept and listed as a domain in M365 when SchoolA wasn't.

 

Since we've removed all of our services away from Entrust (and thus EXA), they want to charge £xx per year to be the domain registrar. Therefore, I want to ensure that everything is moved over to Nominet.

 

I would like to keep schoolb.bham.sch.uk if I can, though Nominet are saying that we should only have one .sch.uk domain per school (therefore schoolz.bham.sch.uk).

 

Does anyone know if there's a way that I can keep the SchoolB domain and possibly regain access to SchoolA?

 

If not, what issues can I expect by losing access to the SchoolB domain and removing it from our M365 tenant?

 

 

Edited April 24 by CHiLL

[pete]

If SchoolNameA and SchoolNameB no longer exist (becoming SchoolNameZ with the DfE) then Nominet give you 3 months grace (up to 6 months if you ask for it) to move services away from the domains for schools that no longer exist.

 

You get one domain per DfE number.

 

Email domainsupport at support dot nominet dot uk for confirmation.