E-ACT

E-ACT (formerly EduTrust Academies Charitable Trust) is the sponsor of 24 academies and free schools in England. It describes itself as "a leading, independent academy sponsor whose principal purpose is to create centres of excellence for all by establishing, maintaining, managing and developing academies and Free Schools".

Until 2009 the Chief Executive of the Trust was Ian Comfort, who left his post alleging whistleblowing concerns, whilst the trust claimed "poor performance" issues. In March 2013 an audit by the UK Department for Education concluded that "boundaries between E-ACT and its subsidiary, E-ACT Enterprises Ltd (EEL) are blurred" (page 3), "activities undertaken by the subsidiary have been paid for with public funds and so appear irregular" (page 3), and "there has been a flow of public monies into EEL that cannot be said to directly benefit teaching and learning in E-ACT academies" (pages 12–13).

A 2011 Guardian article reported that in 2010 its director-general Sir Bruce Liddington had a salary package of £280,017. Sir Bruce Liddington resigned in 2013 after E-ACT received an official warning from the government regarding "financial mismanagement". The investigation report into E-ACT found that internal financial control were weak, there was a culture of extravagant expenses, governance procedures were unusual, and that payments were made to trustees in a manner unusual for the charitable sector.

E-ACT was registered as a charity in 2008 but is now shown by the Charity Commission as an "Exempt charity", removed from its register in 2011.

In 2014, the Department for Education removed E-ACT as sponsor from 10 academies after Ofsted inspectors raised serious concerns, noting extravagant spending on expenses and £393,000 of spending with "procedural irregularities" including on unapproved consultancy fees.

E-ACT Enterprises LTD was dissolved shortly after Sir Bruce Liddington's departure. In addition, E-ACT has made considerable changes to its previous administration practices (including reducing back office costs by 73%) as audited in its public accounts and the Salary of its new CEO has reduced significantly.

In January 2016 E-ACT announced that would abolish local governing bodies for its schools and replace them with centrally appointed advisory bodies.

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Wikipedia