Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many reports his Department has received of irregular financial activity at academy schools, by region, in each of the last.

Academy trust accountability is founded on a clear framework communicated and regulated by the Education and Skills Funding Agency. As a condition of their funding agreement, all academy trusts are required to prepare annual accounts, independently audited by a statutory auditor.

As part of the audit process, the independent auditor undertakes a regularity review to identify instances of material irregularity and non-compliance with the accountability framework. The auditor’s ‘Report on Regularity’ is included in every trust’s annual accounts that are published on each trust’s website and filed with Companies House.

The table below shows the number of cases where auditors did not raise any concerns in their regularity reports and those where auditors noted matters of material irregularity and non-compliance for each of the three academy years 2013 to 2014, 2014 to 2015 and 2015 to 2016. Figures for 2016 to 2017 will be published in Academies Sector Annual Report and Accounts in October 2018.

Any regional breakdown of this national analysis could be potentially misleading given that many multi-academy trusts span regional boundaries.