High-paying Harris Federation spent �12m more than it received in income, accounts reveal

The academy chain which has awarded its chief executive a �550,000 pay package spent �12 million more than it received in income last year, its annual accounts reveal.

The Harris Federation, which had 40 schools in 2016-17, had total income of £168.3 million that year, but total expenditure of £180.6 million.

This “excess of expenditure over income” more than doubled last academic year, with Harris having spent £4.6 million more than its income in 2015-16. In 2014-15, the figure was £1.5m.

Harris’s 2016-17 accounts report it as having £8.6m of reserves, which the accounts say amounts to £215,000 per school. However, that figure has been reducing in recent years: it was £310,000 per school in 2015-16 and, the previous year’s accounts show, was £449,000 per school in 2014-15.

Harris’s reported reserves were £16m in 2014-15 – almost twice the figure now shown in the 2016-17 accounts. However, not all spending recorded in the accounts as in excess of income appears to translate into a diminishing of those reserves.