There are no schools near where we live which can appropriately deliver my child’s special educational provision but there is a school at the other end of the country which could. Does that mean I can’t ask for education otherwise/EOTAS?

No. When a local authority (“LA”) makes a decision about EOTAS, it should apply a degree of common sense about it. When deciding if it would be inappropriate for the special educational provision to be made in a school, the LA has to think about if school would ‘not be suitable’ or ‘proper’, taking all the circumstances into account. A school very far away is unlikely to be somewhere a child could reasonably attend or ‘proper’.