An academy trust broke rules after paying nearly £5,000 in “consultancy services” to the mother of its CEO, a government investigation has found.
The breaches were discovered at the Heart Education Trust after a months-long government probe into whistleblowing complaints over “financial irregularities”.
An investigation ‘outcome’ report, published this morning, also found the trust broke rules after spending £24,000 on training courses for a senior leader and hiring a senior staff member that “bypassed” normal recruitment processes.
The four-school trust has since merged with the Unity Schools Partnership.
£24k training courses and mum’s consulting
The Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA) said it launched an investigation into allegations including “improper recruitment arrangements for senior management” and the “circumvention of controls and related-party transactions” at Heart in January last year.
Officials “identified spend on two training courses for a senior leader totalling £24,050 without sufficient evidence of value-for-money assessments, as required by trust policy”.
There was “evidence of board approval for one of the two courses”.
A “senior external hire” was also discovered to have “bypassed the trust’s standard recruitment procedures”, the report stated. The position “was not advertised, and no formal references were obtained”.
There are no details about which staff members these related to.
Heart also “entered into four related-party transactions totalling £4,747 with a former senior staff member without proper policies, contracts or adequate value for money assessments”. The report said these weren’t disclosed in annual accounts or to the ESFA, as required.
Heart’s most recent accounts – for 2023-24 – show rules covering “related-party transactions were not adhered to in relation to transactions totalling £1,790”. The payments were made to the trust’s founding chief executive Christina Kenna for “consultancy services and other support”.
She is the mother of Hazel Cubbage, who succeeded her as Heart CEO in 2022, the accounts stated. Cubbage remined in the role until the trust merged with the Unity Schools Partnership last September.
CEO and CFO roles merged
Accounts added the trust acquired similar services totalling £2,958 from a company controlled by Kenna the year before. These transactions don’t appear to have been disclosed in 2022-23 accounts.
The investigation report noted the trust’s board “did not ensure effective oversight for managing personal relationships with related parties to avoid both real and perceived conflicts of interest”.
For seven months, the ESFA also found a “senior leader held two roles simultaneously”, compromising “the segregation of duties … with limited scrutiny and challenge”.
It said Heart breached “requirements for the separation of roles of accounting officer and chief financial officer”.
Board minutes were “often lacking detail and declined in quality, making it difficult to track key decisions” from December 2023. ESFA said this “prevented assessment of the factual basis and rationale” for its decisions.
The report revealed DfE’s regions group also “led its own intervention with the trust, which led to all … [its] schools transferring to” the Unity Schools Partnership 12 months ago.
Merger claims
Cubbage, who was Heart’s CEO between June 2022 and September 2024, wrote for Schools Week about the merger in July last year.
She said at the time: “How many CEOs will willingly risk their jobs by recommending a merger rather than carrying on for a few more years to fill the pension pot or find a higher-paid post?”
Cubbage did not provide a comment in relation to the government findings. But when asked why she didn’t mention the investigation in her Schools Week piece, she said it was “highly confidential, and neither I nor the board were authorised to disclose its existence – not even to our own staff.”
The final investigation report was not issued until November, she added.
She said the merger was not prompted by the investigation. The Heart board “resolved to explore” the merger in February last year, she added, which followed “a year of work in respect of our growth strategy, and occurred a fortnight before we received notice of the investigation”.
Cubbage also said she contacted the government’s regions group to “ask if the investigation was a political manoeuvre to force merger with a specific trust”, but “received explicit assurances that it was unconnected, and that merger remained a voluntary matter for the board.”
Kenna was approached for comment.
‘Largescale investigation’
Heart’s latest accounts show its board raised “concerns about governance” during three meetings with the Department for Education towards the end of 2023 and at the start of 2024.
The trust decided to secure government support for a merger in February 2024, the accounts state.
This came after the resignation of its chief finance officer in October 2023, who left after just two months in the job.
Their “whistleblowing allegations” sparked the “large-scale ESFA investigation”, accounts said. The probe – which the accounts say ran from March to June 2024 – “placed significant strains on already limited trust resources”.
Sarah Garner, now Unity’s interim CEO, wrote in the accounts that she was “not satisfied with certain procedures previously utilised within the” trust.
But the merger provided her “with confidence that these concerns have been addressed, and substandard practices have been discontinued”.
She was also assured that since its new CFO’s appointment in April 2024, they have “carried out best practice at all times … despite difficult circumstances”.
Garner told Schools Week today Unity has “greatly enjoyed supporting and working” with Heart’s four primaries and “welcoming them into our family of schools”.
“We have been hugely impressed by the passion and dedication shown by staff and the pleasing set of results each school has had over the last 12 months.”
Update: This article was updated on October 8, with the section titled ‘merger claims’ amended to include quotes provided by Cubbage post-publication
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