31 trusts fail to justify pay – but DfE admits it’s powerless to act

Thirty-one academy trusts have failed to justify their levels of executive pay to the government, the Department for Education has said.

But officials today admitted they cannot take any enforcement action against chains which ignore their most recent warning, leaving the department having to just write letters until they justify pay or change their ways.

Eileen Milner, the chief executive of the Education and Skills Funding Agency, has issued a second warning to 31 trusts which have “failed to provide adequate justification” for paying multiple members of staff more than £100,000-a-year. The 31 were among 213 trusts to have received one of four warning letters over the past year-and-a-half.