Academies: Condition Improvement Funding

CIF funding (Condition Improvement Funding) will be in full swing as many academy accountants complete their meetings. CIF funding will be scored against 3 weighted assessment criteria. Historically this has been based mainly on the type of project, academy contribution, need etc. However, this year some additional scoring metrics will be added. These will favour bids from schools “with good governance and organised finances – including showing restraint on executive salaries”. These will include:

• trusts that pay two or more salaries of over £100,000 or one salary over £150,000 and are deemed to have “have failed to take appropriate action” to tackle pay will get a four-point deduction
• trusts will lose up to an additional four points if they have not submitted a financial improvement plan following a visit from a school resource management adviser
• trusts can gain one extra point if they sign up to the government’s latest funding agreement

On the second two bullet points, we have seen this occur within Trusts in the South-West, of which had some irregular expenditure. Part of the ESFA’s conditions to not impose a FNTI was to adopt the new funding agreement and to have a SRMA visit.