When this has happened before locally the person concerned lodged an appeal but a place was given as it was felt that appeal was 100% likely to be successful.
The real issue was that we didn't know they had miscalculated the distance until our dd's friend was given a place. We could still have been further down the list because they had effectively added 6 miles on to the distance.
if you're on a waiting list get your distance from school confirmed!