Departing academy CEO received nearly £200,000 in pensions payments – or did he? UPDATE: no he didn't!

Very high pensions contributions listed in 2022-23 accounts - only to be changed in following year's financial statements. It has now been confirmed that the figure published in the 2022-23 accounts was wrong.

 

A small academy trust paid its chief executive nearly £200,000 in pensions payments in 2022-23, its annual accounts for that year stated – only for this then to be revised down to £5,000 or less in the next year’s set of accounts.

In a revelation which sheds light either on the extraordinary generosity that academy budgeting can show towards those in charge, or on the occasional unreliability of trust accounting, this striking inconsistency was revealed in the financial statements of a two-school trust in Kent.

In the 2022-23 accounts of the Charles Darwin Academy Trust, in Biggin Hill, the-then chief executive, Sunil Chotai, was stated to have received a total remuneration package of around £200,000. This, in itself, would have been remarkable, for the trust was running only two schools at the time: a primary and a secondary, with 1,693 pupils on roll in total, as of summer 2023.

However, even more striking was the amount within this which was listed as the employer’s contribution to Mr Chotai’s pension, in 2022-23: £175-£180,000. His salary, by contrast, was listed as only £20-£25,000, making a total package of £195-£205,000.

Mr Chotai’s 2022-23 pension, as listed in the accounts for that year, was, however, drastically downgraded when it came to the publication of the following year’s accounts.

In the trust’s financial statements for 2023-24, Mr Chotai’s pay and pensions package for 2022-23 was listed as £20,000-£25,000 in remuneration – in itself a staggeringly low figure for a chief executive – but with pensions contributions of only £1-£5,000.

So one of these pensions figures must have been wrong. It is possible to wonder how both set of accounts were signed off with no note as far as I can see about the inconsistency, with Mr Chotai himself having been the accounting officer for both years, and with the same firm – Sittingbourne-based McCabe Ford Williams – listed as the trust’s “Statutory Auditors and Chartered Accountants” in both 2022-23 and 2023-24.

I will be asking this company what happened.

It will not be possible to ask the trust itself, since it “merged with” – so its schools joined – the Inicio Educational Trust on April 1^st last year.

There is a little bit more explanation as the position of Mr Chotai, within Charles Darwin Academy Trust’s 2023-24 accounts.

These state that Mr Chotai, “the former headteacher of Charles Darwin School [the trust’s secondary] retired on 31^st December 2021, but retained the roles of CEO and Accounting Officer, overseeing both Charles Darwin School and Biggin Hill Primary School until his resignation in October 2023,” with the chief executive of Inicio appointed interim CEO at Charles Darwin Academy Trust in November 2023.   

Mr Chotai’s sky-high reported pension payments in 2022-23 were highlighted in a press release put out on Sunday by the Taxpayers’ Alliance campaign group, which I analysed in this separate piece published yesterday.

Update (Friday, March 21st)

Education Uncovered was contacted by Mr Chotai following the publication of the article above. I also emailed McCabe Ford Williams about it.

Both have now confirmed that the pensions figure published for Mr Chotai for 2022-23 was wrong, with Mr Chotai having stated that in fact he received no pensions payments for that year, and with McCabe Ford Williams confirming that the published figure was incorrect.

Mr Chotai told me: “For clarity, I retired from my substantive position at CDAT on 31 December 2021. Following this, I was employed part-time as CEO for one/two days per week to oversee matters until a new CEO could be appointed. My salary for this role was £21,600. As I was already retired and drawing my pension, no further pension contributions were made during this period. Therefore, for the 2022-23 academic year, I received no pension contributions. I cannot explain why the annual report states otherwise, but this is being investigated.

“You can imagine my shock upon learning that the report suggests I received pension contributions of approximately £200,000 for 2022-23. This is entirely incorrect and has caused me considerable anguish and embarrassment.

“To provide further context:

• A new CEO took up the post in November 2023, in preparation for the trust’s merger with a larger trust.
• The annual report was prepared by the auditor in November/December 2023.
• Having retired and departed in October 2023, I did not have access to the finalised accounts/annual report for 2022-23 and was unable to review the details.

I can categorically confirm that I received no pension contributions for 2022-23.”

McCabe Ford Williams told me: “We confirm that the employer pension contributions disclosure relating to Mr Chotai was incorrect within the 31 August 2023 financial statements of the academy trust.

“We have no further comments to make at this time.”

There was a mistake, too, in my reporting of this. I wrote that Mr Chotai was himself the accounting officer for both 2022-23 and 2023-24. But that was wrong. First, he had left the trust before the 2023-24 academic year. And second, although he did indeed hold the position of accounting officer throughout the 2022-23 academic year, as indicated by Mr Chotai above and as confirmed in the 2022-23 accounts, he was not in the position of accounting officer when the 2022-23 accounts, with the error about the pensions payments, were signed off.