Merger plans that would create England’s second-biggest multi-academy trust are due to be decided next month – by a board its chair sits on and with its chief executive already in charge of the other chain.
Delta Academies Trust boss Paul Tarn took over Coast and Vale Learning Trust as chief executive in April.
It followed an “in-principle agreement” between the two trusts to join forces.
The proposals – which will take Delta’s tally to 63 schools – will go before the Department for Education’s Yorkshire and Humber advisory board in two weeks.
But leaders have warned of the risks attached to such a move.
One trust chief executive, who asked not to be named, said: “The advisory board is in a very difficult position because they [the trusts] are so far down the line.
“If the board doesn’t think it’s the right match, what happens then?”
Steve Hodsman, Delta’s chair, is a co-opted member of the advisory board. He declined to comment.
Advisory board members are not decision-makers, but they “help inform” decisions made by regional directors.
DfE guidance states that the regional director’s “office maintains a register of all… conflicts of interest”.
Where one exists, the board member “will not receive relevant advisory papers” and have to remove themselves from discussions on the project”.
They “must not provide any advice” on the plans.
‘The east coast is not well served’
Schools Week revealed in March that Coast and Vale decided to merge after all nearby “capacity giver” schools had academised.
Its advertisement for a new boss stated it would be “an interim post”, with the new chief expected “to manage a merger … within the next two years”, Michael McCluskie, the trust’s director of education, said.
Tarn proposed stepping into the position and “if you like what you see, you take a decision at a later stage over whether you’d like to formally join us”, he said. Trustees came to an “in-principle agreement” to join Delta.
Speaking this week, Tarn said he had not been paid for his second post.
Coast and Vale has a service-level agreement with Delta worth about £50,000 for central services to cover “fuel and the odd overnight [stay]”.
“I didn’t want six schools – that wasn’t why I wrote to them. The east coast is not well served… I said we’ll create a trust that has the capacity to support others on the coast”.
Latest government figures show Delta is currently the third largest MAT in England.
If it merges with Coast and Vale, it will overtake Reach2, which runs 62 schools.
United Learning Trust, with 90 academies, is the country’s largest.
