Are you ready for the new academies financial handbook?
Jaime Hobday has a look at ensuring compliance with the new requirements. The new academies financial handbook, which applies with effect from 1 September 2016, continues to emphasise
The new academies financial handbook, which applies with effect from 1 September 2016, continues to emphasise the importance of good governance with Lord Nash's foreword making it clear that the 'new edition…prompts you to identify the skills and experience that you need as a board and, where necessary, to strengthen your abilities through recruitment, training or development.'
Here, we provide a helpful checklist for you to ensure your compliance with the new changes:
| Paragraph references |
Actions for implementation |
|
Skills and experience (1.5.14) |
Has the board identified the skills and experience that it needs, and addressed any gaps through recruitment, and/or induction, training and other development activities? Has the board also addressed this for any local governing bodies it has put in place? The Governance Handbook (November 2015) identifies a range of training material to help trustees engage fully with their role. |
|
Registers of business interest (2.5.2, 3.1.20) |
Have you published the relevant business and pecuniary interests of the accounting officer, regardless of whether they are a trustee? |
|
Registers of business interest (3.1.18) |
Does your business interest form for local governors (as well as members and trustees), also capture close family members who might contract with the trust either as employees or through their businesses? |
|
EFA notifications (4.7.4) |
Are you notifying the EFA of the appointment or vacating of the positions of members, trustees, local governors, accounting officer and chief financial officer using the governance section of Edubase (accessed through Secure Access) within 14 days? |
| Whistleblowing (2.3.5) |
Do you have a whistleblowing procedure? |
|
RPA (2.3.11) |
Have you considered opting into the risk protection arrangement unless a commercial insurance provides better value for money? |
| Risk management (2.3.12) |
Have you implemented reasonable risk management recommendations made by your auditors? |
| Audit committee (2.4.5) |
Where you have constituent academies, does your audit committee have oversight over those academies' controls and risks? |
Further things to be aware of:
- All trusts must have a 'senior executive leader' who should also be the accounting officer - these roles must not rotate.
- Variances between budget and actual income and expenditure must be understood and addressed.
- Exposure to investment products must be tightly controlled so that security of funds takes precedence over revenue maximisation.
- The trust may be required to report information about its cash position to the EFA where there are concerns about financial management.
The handbook continues to helpfully list all of the 'musts' in Annex C and so we have not repeated that here. It also still refers to those matters of minimum good practice which it refers to as the 'shoulds'. All details can be found in the full document.