The main changes in the Academy Trust Handbook effective 1 September 2025
Sean Douglass, Partner at Bates Weston has been looking at the latest edition of the Academy Trust Handbook, published this month and changes to the Academies Accounts Direction 2024/25
The handbook records changes to:
Roles and responsibilities
- Trusts should understand and be working towards the 6 core digital and technology standards by 2030
- Further guidance on estates management
- Updated accounting officer duties and definitions of regularity, propriety, value for money and feasibility
- Increased guidance on Managing Public Money
Main financial requirements
- Further guidance and support on procurement
- Clarifying the board’s role in setting executive pay
Internal Scrutiny
- Clarifying that income thresholds are based on a trust’s last audited accounts
Delegated authorities
- Explaining how cost could cause a transaction to be repercussive (in effect to set a precedent)
The regulator and intervention
- Confirms that trusts must not pay any cyber ransomware demands
- Removing educational performance as an area where a Notice to Improve may be issued
- Confirming that the DfE may recover funds where there is evidence of irregularity or fraud
Changes to the Academies Accounts Direction
These have been kept to a minimum.
The main changes are:
- Alerting academy trusts to the Companies Act 2006 requirement for the inclusion of a non-financial and sustainability information statement within the strategic report for trusts with turnover greater than £500m and more than 500 employees; and
- Reflecting the freedom, which allows academy trusts to take out certain finance leases and providing model disclosures for the notes to the financial statements to assist those academy trusts that may have entered into such leases
If you would like to speak with us about your school audit, please do get in touch with Sean Douglass.
