Your DH may be correct and they may be trying to actively discourage people from applying there. DDs school had its largest prep enrolment with her year and then another big year after that so the had over 100 children entering each year but only 60 going out so it does not take long for a school to grow quickly. Apparently Dept education does not like to put a ceiling on numbers or "zone" primary schools so schools have deal with the issue themselves.
DDs school started to not do the regular advertising of tours and telling parents who were coming a long distance to consider their closest school.
The year that we looked for schools for DD we only went to one school tour and luckily it was great!
The school is already zoned, as are most of the ones in the area (we are in the zone for this one). When they do the Wed tours they have different ones whether you are in or out of zone. There is quite an issue in the area in general because they keep having to change the zones due to numbers but are really not solving the problem.

Is not very good to try put people off who do live in the zone like me. As others surrounding schools are also zoned is not like I have a big choice within state system, even if I was prepared to travel further which am not.

You know when the assistant head attitude towards me changed, when I said I had been to their school fête many times. After that she was far more interested in giving me information. Very bizarre.