Question to the Department for Education:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what sanctions they intend to apply to those academies who fail to file their accounts on time.

The Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA) expects academy trusts to meet the requirements it sets out for financial returns. Submitting these on time is an essential requirement of the Academies Financial Handbook and a strong indicator of good governance within the trust.

The vast majority of academy trusts do submit their financial returns on time. To improve compliance, and in fairness to trusts that submit their returns on time, the department names those trusts that were late with two or more of their financial returns each academic year.

The ESFA will intervene where a trust’s governance is not robust. These intervention powers are clearly set out in the Academies Financial Handbook. This can include issuing a Financial Notice to Improve or, in the most serious cases, termination of the Funding Agreement.

The number of academy trusts submitting two or more late returns has more than halved, reducing from 88 in 2017/18 to 43 in 2018/19. The latest list was published on 14 October 2019 and is available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/academy-trusts-late-financial-returns-2018-to-2019/academy-trusts-late-financial-returns-2018-to-2019.