As your article reports, SchoolsCompany was issued with a ‘Financial Notice to Improve’ by government’s Education and Skills Funding Agency, in July 2017, expressing urgent concerns about weaknesses in financial management, requests for additional funds, and and governance. The 2016 Accounts show money leaching away, with a deficit of £943,118, up from £34,649 the previous year. The Notice demands 19 improvements in practice be put into place, including eliminating the deficit by the end of the financial year, making every possible economy including in the inflated Trust Senior Management Team, and staffing costs across the Trust’s . It has clearly failed in a number of these requirements,
Of the 11 Trustees at the time of the Notice, eight were paid a salary by the Trust, so had a sharp conflict of interest with regard to their responsibilities. Ten have now resigned from the Trust, with seven new members appointed, six for December 2017. The seventh, Angela Barry, an appointee of the Regional Schools Commissioner, arrived on 23rd February, displacing the current owner of the Trust as CEO, although he remains as the sole survivor of the original Board.
The whole is horribly reminiscent of the Lilac Sky Academy Trust fiasco last year, involving seven Kent schools, where Angela Barry was brought in to close it down as being financially non-viable after a large amount of money vanished from the accounts.
