Employment in the family: is this the highest number of related party transactions in an academy trust?

Gorse Academies Trust has multiple declarations of employment of family members set out in its accounts.

 

A prominent academy trust headed by a £230,000-a-year chief executive has employed his wife, daughter and sister in recent years, while also giving work to his nephew’s company.

Gorse Academies Trust, which is just outside England’s top 50 largest chains, has also made multiple declarations about the employment of family members of other senior employees and trustees in recent sets of accounts.

The organisation may have the most “related party” disclosures of any academy trust – an aspect of the academies policy which can continue to excite debate and controversy on the ground. Gorse said in response that all appointments had been “made in open competition,” with no relation having had “any involvement in the recruitment decision-making process”.

 

Sir John Townsley’s relations

The accounts of Gorse, which runs 15 schools, all but one of which are in Leeds, have been declaring the detail of the employment of family members of its senior leadership and board members since 2021-22.

These recent accounts show that Helen Townsley, wife of Gorse’s long-serving chief executive Sir John Townsley, has been employed by the trust as principal of Ryecroft Academy, a primary school in Leeds which has been with the trust since 2014.

A profile of Helen Townsley, which is available on Ryecroft’s website, says she has been its principal since March 2017. 

Meanwhile, the 2023-24 accounts also state that Sir John’s daughter, Sophie Townsley, has been serving as an “assistant principal” at Richmond Hill Academy, another Gorse primary in Leeds. Accounts for 2021-22 and 2022-23 state that she was employed as a teacher at the school during those years.

Gorse’s accounts for 2021-22 also state that Sir John’s sister, whose first name is not stated, was vice-principal at another of its schools during that year: Ruth Gorse Academy, a secondary free school in Leeds.

These disclosures have only been made in the last three years’ accounts. In those of the previous year, 2020-21, the declaration was much less specific, stating only: "Employed within the trust are the spouse and daughter of the CEO and the daughter of a trustee, their remuneration is in line with national pay scales.”

Meanwhile, Gorse’s accounts also show that the trust paid £97,384 in total over the years 2020-24 to a company called Noise Academy. Recent Gorse accounts state that this firm is “managed” by Sir John Townsley’s nephew, Joe Townsley. Companies House records indicate that he is the sole owner and director of this firm, which was set up in 2019.

A Yorkshire Evening Post article from back in 2016 said that Mr Townsley, a DJ, had at that time been providing one-to-one music sessions with secondary pupils at two Gorse secondary academies, allowing them to “learn DJ craft while developing a sense of self-discipline during the 12-week courses”.

Gorse’s 2023-24 accounts state: “The Noise Academy provides access to music technology for pupils through innovative learning programs [sic] and offers pathways for young people to pursue a career in the music industry…in 2023/24 the trust purchased numerous sessions for pupils at the Stephen Longfellow Academy, John Smeaton Academy, Morley Newlands Academy and the Ruth Gorse Academy.

The cost for each of the last four years, starting with the most recent, was £36,000; £24,444; £18,880; and £18,060. Joe Townsley was stated in the 2016 article to have been living in Lincoln. His company, which was established in 2019, is based there.

Other related party transactions

Recent Gorse accounts have featured multiple other declarations of family members of senior staff and trustees having been employed, as well as some companies connected to family members and a governor having been used.

Those for 2023-24 feature eight family members of either senior staff or trustees being themselves employed by the trust. Nicola Cornfoot is listed as a principal within the trust, and her spouse as “a partnership director within the central team”; Gorse’s website suggests that both Ms Cornfoot and her husband, Michael Cornfoot, work in the central team, with Ms Cornfoot serving as principal at Leeds Teaching School Hub.

Gorse currently has 21 people listed as part of its central team, led by Sir John Townsley. As well as the Cornfoots, Adam and Nikki Ryder are listed among them, and declared as married in Gorse’s 2023-24 accounts. Adam Ryder is a deputy executive principal at Gorse, and currently principal at Morley Academy, the website states, while Nikki Ryder is a partnership director at the trust. Adam Ryder’s mother-in-law is also declared in the last three years’ accounts as having worked as an exams invigilator at the trust.

Another member of the central team, Debra Seekings, listed on the website as a senior partnership director at Gorse, has a daughter who as of 2023-24 was principal at Morley Newlands Academy, a primary school in Leeds, having been an executive director at Gorse SCITT (School Centred Initial Teacher Training).

One of Gorse’s recent board members, Paul Forbes, has a daughter who is listed in the last three years’ accounts as a vice-principal at Morley Newlands Academy – meaning she worked for Ms Seekings’ daughter. Also working at this school, as a teacher, was the wife of another board member, Jon Fyffe. And the wife of David Bradshaw, a member of the Gorse Academy Trust so sitting at the top of its governance structure, is chair of governors at Morley Newlands Academy, the 2023-24 accounts state.

Previous years’ accounts from 2021-22 onwards list similar numbers of employment connections, including one which looked to have been at a high level: Judith Shore was the trust’s chief operating officer and company secretary while her partner was a finance director within the central team. Both left the trust in December 2022.

A union source, who has looked at these arrangements, said they “looked excessive” but was not sure the extent to which they were out of line with that seen elsewhere in the schools sector. Education Uncovered has frequently come across concerns about close relationships between employees at the top of academy trusts – and indeed, worries about the policy having been set up in a way that connections between those on boards can seem routine or even integral to its nature have been at the core of much writing on this website. However, the number of employee connections declared in the accounts of a reasonably large chain, as seen in recent years at Gorse, is unusual, in my experience.

Gorse states in its 2023-24 accounts, under its related party declarations, that: “All appointments were made in open competition and the trust colleagues identified above had no involvement in the decision-making process in regard to the recruitment of their disclosed family member.

“Trust colleagues identified are paid in line with national pay scales [although there is no pay scale for positions working within trusts’ central administration] appropriate to their position and receive no special treatment as a result of their relationship.”

No declaration in previous years

It is interesting that these connections have only been declared in recent years’ accounts, though in some cases they clearly pre-date these declarations. In the 2020-21 accounts, there were no declarations of family members’ employment other than the statement: “Employed with the trust are the spouse and daughter of the Chief Executive Officer, and the daughter of a trustee, their remuneration is in line with national pay scales.” In previous years, there were no declarations.

The 2023-24 accounts state that in 2021/22 a decision was taken by the trust to declare transactions  with Noise Academy and two other companies in which an employee and a governor have connections “to avoid a perceived conflict of interest,” alongside its declarations of family members being employed by the trust. The trust’s accounts from 2015-16, when as mentioned above Joe Townsley’s company was reported in the local media to have been working with the trust, do not declare the connection; the latest accounts state that there has been no requirement to do so and that this decision was taken voluntarily by the trust*.

Wider background on Gorse

Sir John Townsley, Gorse’s leader since its foundation in 2011 and its current chief executive, was paid £230-£240,000 last year. This would have placed him** in and around the top 20 highest-paid academy leaders. Sir John also received employer’s pension contributions of £50-£60,000 last year.

Gorse, which had 11,218 pupils as of last academic year, is also well-known for a strict approach to behaviour management, with Sir John having been a pioneer of “isolation rooms,” now widely used in English secondary schools in particular. 

Gorse response

I asked the Gorse Academies Trust about all of this.

It said in a statement that Gorse had recently ben ranked “the 13^th best trust in the country for Progress 8, and second best in Yorkshire and Humber”.

It added: “We list all appointments of this nature in our publicly available accounts. All were made in open competition, with no relation having any involvement in the recruitment decision-making process. All are paid in line with national pay scales appropriate to their position and receive no special treatment as a result of any relationship.

“Our mission is to provide the very best education and care to the children and young people in our schools. To do that, we need a great team, and we are proud of the quality and commitment of every colleague in our trust, all of whom work with us for no other reason than their professional abilities. We do not intend to change our policy of employing the best people available.”

 

*It seems unclear to me, what the rules would be in terms of declaration of related party transactions when that related party is not a spouse/partner or child (a nephew, in this case). The DfE’s Academies Accounts Direction defines a close family member as: “Those family members who may be expected to influence, or be influenced by, that person in their dealings with the entity including (a) that person’s children and spouse or domestic partner; (b) children of that person’s spouse or domestic partner; and (c) dependants of that person or that person’s spouse or domestic partner.”

While it seems that a nephew does not come under any of those specific cases highlighted at points (a) to (c) above, the word “including” would suggest that these categories are not meant to be exclusive. Gorse’s recent accounts have stated, however, that its “external audit partner” had agreed with it that contracts with companies connected in this way did not meet the official definition of related party contracts, and therefore that these declarations had been made voluntarily. By implication, then, the argument was that they did not need to have been made in previous years.

 

**Sir John did not actually feature in the provisional top 20 list I made last month. I think this was because it was based on looking at the accounts of trusts which had been listed for the previous year by Schools Week as top-payers, and Gorse had not featured there.