Correspondence

EFA e-bulletin for academies: 24 March 2016

Published 24 March 2016

This correspondence was withdrawn on 20 December 2019

This has been withdrawn as it’s out of date. The EFA e-bulletin has been replaced by ESFA Update.

1. Information: Condition Improvement Fund (CIF) outcome

The Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Schools, Lord Nash, announced on 24 March 2016 the Condition Improvement Fund 2016 to 2017 outcome.

The announcement confirms funding of £435 million for 1,276 projects across academies and sixth-form colleges.

We will publish guidance on appeals on GOV.UK in the week commencing 18 April 2016.

2. Information: March accounts return due 31 May 2016

EFA requires academy trusts to submit a March 2016 accounts return by 31 May 2016 if:

• they did not prepare audited financial statements as at 31 August 2015 and had open academies at 31 March 2016
• they did prepare audited financial statements at 31 August 2015 and they opened new academies between then and 31 March 2016

We will publish the accounts return on GOV.UK by the end of March 2016, together with guidance on completing and submitting the return. At the same time a series of training videos will be available on the EFA training website.

We will hold a live webinar covering the March accounts return at 3pm on 26 April 2016. You can register now for the webinar. The webinar will include a question and answer session, and you can submit questions in advance when you register.

3. Reminder: national non-domestic rates claims

If you haven’t yet claimed for national non-domestic rates (NNDR) for the financial year 2014 to 2015, you should complete the online claims form by 31 March 2016. EFA will make payments in full, within 2 months of your claim.

The form will be refreshed for claims for financial year 2016 to 2017 on 1 April 2016. It will still be available for claims for 2015 to 2016.

If you need to make additional claims for buildings that have been revalued before the financial year 2015 to 2016, you should contact us using our enquiry form. Please attach affected invoices relating to the revaluations.

4. Information: post-16 allocation statements for 2016 to 2017 academic year

We have now issued revised statements to schools and academies which confirm allocations of student support funding. We have also issued statements for non-maintained special schools (NMSS) (inclusive of student support) and special post-16 institutions (SPIs) (excluding student support). All statements are located in Document Exchange in the ‘revenue funding’ folder under ‘AY 2016-17 (2016/17)’. To access these folders please log into EFA Information Exchange.

We expect to upload the following statements by the end of 24 March 2016:

• revised statements (inclusive of student support funding) for further education colleges, local authorities with direct delivery, and higher education institutions (HEI) using Individualised Learner Record (ILR) data
• final allocation statements for charitable and commercial providers (CCPs)
• funding allocation statements and allocation calculation toolkit (ACT) files for HEIs using returning Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) data

We expect to upload revised statements for special post-16 institutions (inclusive of student support funding) by 31 March 2016.

Institutions are asked to note the approaching deadlines for business cases.

• all institution types (except for the groups outlined below) - 8 April 2016
• NMSS, SPIs, CCPs and HEIs returning HESA data - 22 April 2016

We have updated our explanatory notes on GOV.UK to include information on student support funding.

If you have any issues using EFA Information Exchange, please check our support guidance.

For queries about allocation statements, please refer to our funding guidance on GOV.UK. You can contact us via our online enquiry form.

5. Information: visit EFA at the Academies Show

Come and visit EFA at the Academies Show on Wednesday 20 April 2016 at the ExCeL Centre in London.

We look forward to meeting visitors on our stand at the show, as well as at the various conference and workshop sessions to which EFA is contributing.

6. Information: Key to Success (KtS) availability

The KtS system will be unavailable from 5pm on 31 March 2016 for essential maintenance. Normal service will resume from 9am on 4 April 2016.

We would appreciate if you could ensure all system users are aware of this notice.

We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause. You should contact us via our service request form for any support requests for KtS from 4 April 2016.