Exclusive: School fund threatened with removal of charitable status

A CHARITY that received £660,000 in connection with a controversial series of lucrative school improvement deals faces being removed from the official register for a persistent failure to file accounts.

The Outwood Grange School Fund received the payments from a consultancy set up by the Wakefield-based school but has not filed any accounts with the Charity Commission since January last year.

The Commission, which has a legal brief to ensure transparency in charity management, said it has written several times without response and has now begun action to remove the fund from its register.

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The Outwood Grange School Fund received £240,000 from the school’s consultancy arm in March 2009 and a further £420,000 in the 2009/10 financial year. The first payment was recorded in the last set of accounts filed by the charity for the year ending March 2009 but the second is only apparent from the consultancy’s accounts which were filed on time with Companies House.

As the charity has not filed any accounts for the 2009/10 financial year there are no records of what it has done with the £660,000. They should have been filed by the end of January this year.

Failure to account for the money is a sensitive issue for Outwood Grange which is already at the centre of controversy surrounding huge payments for improving five struggling secondary schools.

A Yorkshire Post investigation revealed it had received about £3.2m from Doncaster, North Yorkshire and Stockton councils and how the services of its “superhead”, Michael Wilkins, cost the tax- payer more than £1m over four years.

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A private company – the Outwood Grange Consultancy – was a channel for most of the £3.2m.

This then went back to the school to be paid out in increased fees for staff – including Mr Wilkins – to compensate for staff sent out on improvement work at other schools and to the Outwood Grange School Fund.

A Charity Commission spokeswoman said: “We have sent the charity numerous letters reminding them that they have not filed their annual return and accounts. In May, we wrote to the charity’s trustees explaining that the charity is on notice to be removed from the register and could be removed within the next three months.”

Removal of any charity from the register does not occur without close scrutiny of the organisation’s assets.

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An audit by Wakefield Council into Outwood’s finances before it became an academy in 2009 raised concerns about how public money was spent. It also challenged £147,000 in fees paid to Mr Wilkins’ private company for work at other schools in the two years to March 2009 – on top of £236,000 in salary. The audit said the payments were not “subject to the necessary levels of authorisation” and Mr Wilkins should repay £91,000. He declined to do so and the council has no remit to enforce repayment.

An Outwood Grange Academies Trust (OGAT) spokeswoman said: “Whilst there is no obligation to do so, following the issues raised in the recent Wakefield Council financial audit, OGAT has requested that the Outwood Grange School Fund accounts are formally audited by our external auditors. Our auditors are Saffery Champness, a national firm who are experts in both education and charitable institutions. We are working with them to ensure the accounts are filed as soon as possible.”

The school did not respond to a request for information on what the charity had spent the money on. The Department for Education did not respond when asked to comment.