A troubled academy trust whose financial woes threaten its future spent £78,000 with a communications consultancy in a single year, TES can reveal.

The Bright Futures Educational Trust (BFET), which is sponsored by Altrincham Grammar School for Girls, owes the Education Funding Agency (EFA) more than £4.5 million.

Its financial accounts for 2015-16 revealed that it was in talks with the funding body to defer payments, and warned that failure to agree a new action plan would “cast doubt on the ability to proceed on a going concern basis”.

However, despite these financial pressures, BFET bought “marketing and other professional services” worth £78,000 from the Manchester-based company MC2 in the same period.

The firm’s managing director had joined the governing body of one of the trust’s nine schools, Rushbrook Primary, the previous year.

Normal procedures ‘were followed’

BFET’s accounts said that “no decisions regarding the provision of services by MC2 have been made at Rushbook, and MC2 had been successful in tendering for services across the group prior to that appointment”.

It added that all such “related-party transactions” were conducted at arm’s length and in accordance with the academy trust’s financial regulations and normal procurement procedures.

A spokesman for BFET said: “This was a prior contract that involved managing all PR, marketing, advertising and external communications and events - for all the nine schools and the trust itself, as communications with the media, community, stakeholders and parents is important.

“We are not working with this company any more, however, as part of the restructure and reallocation of resources.”

The trust owes the EFA about £2 million in overpayments it made to Connell Sixth Form College after it failed to recruit its target number of students.

It owes a further £2.5 million for capital projects at other schools.

BFET’s new chief executive, John Stephens, has said that working with the EFA “to reach a satisfactory conclusion on all of the points raised” was his priority.

The Department for Education has said the EFA is “working with the new leadership team to agree a robust recovery plan‎ for the trust”.

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