This article refers to the Academy Trust Handbook (ATH) 2023, which comes into effect on 1 September 2023. It breaks down the changes highlighted on page 7 of the handbook.
Financial changes
An extra month to submit your budget to the Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA)
The new deadline, starting from this summer (2023), is the end of August rather than end of July (paragraph 2.15).
Your trust is no longer required to set financial KPIs
The requirement for a trust to select key financial performance indicators (financial KPIs) and regularly measure its performance against them has been removed from 'Part 2: main financial requirements' in the new ATH.
This change wasn't listed in the DfE's list of updates (on page 7), so we contacted the DfE and a representative confirmed that this is no longer mandatory.
ESFA approval isn't needed for related party