Guidance

Section 151 officer return: guidance for completion of the digital form

Published 22 April 2024

Applies to England

1. Introduction

Local authorities are responsible for financial regularity in schools. The section 151 (S151) officer (usually the chief financial officer) of the local authority is responsible for making the necessary arrangements for local financial and management controls, under S151 of the Local Government Act 1972.

Under these arrangements, the S151 officer, must ensure that the grant monies received from DFE/ESFA for pre-16 and post-16 grants (non-dedicated schools grant) are used for the purpose for which they are intended.

2. About the grants

The requirements for each grant are detailed in separate forms. You must complete a form for each of the grants listed in your schedule before submitting your S151 officer statement declaration.

The S151 officer is also required to submit a schools financial value standard (SFVS) assurance statement to the department each year, confirming that they have in place a system of audit for schools that gives them adequate assurance over their standards of financial management and the regularity and propriety of their spending. The SFVS assurance was previously collected through a separate file transfer process called Document Exchange. We have now incorporated it into this digital form to streamline our interactions.

For more information, and instructions on completing your returns, read this guidance document. If you need more help with completing your returns, contact us via the customer help portal.

3. When to complete your submission 

The deadline for submitting the SFVS assurance statement, all funding forms, and your S151 officer statement declaration for the financial period of 1 April 2023 to 31 March 2024 is 5pm on 24 May 2024. It would be helpful if you can complete your submissions earlier.

4. Accessing the form 

Please read the below sections before accessing the S151 officer returns digital form to complete your submission for 2023 to 2024.

4.1 Before you start  

Make sure you have:

• a DfE Sign-in account that is linked to your organisation. You need to have an account with the DfE sign-in service. If you have not used DfE sign-in before you’ll need to create an account
• your spend details for each grant in your schedule for the financial year 2023 to 2024
• details of unspent grant funding that may be recoverable by ESFA
• details of any instances of fraud or theft

For your SFVS assurance statement return, you will need to know:

• the number of eligible schools in the local authority, broken down by school type, for example, nursery, primary, secondary
• the number of eligible schools that have completed the SFVS, broken down by school type
• the number of eligible schools that did not complete the SFVS, both with and without exemptions, broken down by school type
• the number of eligible schools against each exemption reason
• the name and URN of each school that did not complete the SFVS without an exemption
• the number of related party transactions (RPTs) entered into by schools with a value greater than £20,000

4.2 DfE Sign-in

Sign in to your DfE Sign-in account

Follow the below steps to access the form via your DfE Sign-in account:

1. Access the online form and when prompted, enter your DfE Sign-in credentials (your username and password) for authentication.
2. Choose the organisation that you are completing the form for – this is only required if you are linked to multiple organisations.
3. The next page will display the details we hold about the organisation you selected when you signed in. This will show the name, address and unique identifier of the local authority, as well as the name and email address of the person who signed into DfE Sign-in.
4. If these details are correct, then all you need do is to select ‘Continue’ to go to the next page.
5. If you believe these details are incorrect, please contact us via the customer help portal and we will investigate. You can still proceed with your submission.
6. Complete the form as instructed in the following sections.

For the purpose of form completion, your account must be connected to the local authority you are completing the form(s) for. You do not need to add any services in DfE sign-in; it is used only for authentication.

If you do not have a DfE Sign-in account 

You will need to create an account by following steps 1 to 5 below: 

1. Select ‘create a DfE Sign-in account’ on the DfE Sign-in page.
2. Enter your name and email address (use a valid business email address that contains your name).
3. We will send you an email to verify your email address; copy the code from this email and paste it into the box on the verification page.
4. Create a memorable password of 8 characters or more. Your password must include 2 uppercase letters, 2 lowercase letters, and 2 numbers.
5. Sign in using your new credentials, and request access to the organisation for which you would like to submit the forms. Your request will be sent to the approver(s) at the local authority for action.

Once your request to access an organisation has been approved, you can follow the steps outlined under already have a DfE account to complete the form.

You might have noticed the term ‘approver’ when creating your account. An approver is someone at your organisation responsible for controlling who has access to DfE Sign-in and the services within the system. It is usually a senior person, such as an administrator or a manager.

For security reasons, you will need the approval of one of your organisation’s approvers before you can access the form.

4.3  If you need further assistance

If you need help with DfE Sign-in, use our DfE Sign-in help service. You will be able to request further assistance if required. When raising a support request, select ‘other.’

If you have problems accessing the form, please contact us via the customer help portal.

5.  Completing the form 

When authenticated through DfE Sign-in, you will find a ‘save and continue’ button on each page of the form(s). If you have to sign out of a form or your form is opened for an extended period before submitting it, you can resume your submission when you sign back in.

Selecting ‘save and continue’ on each page will take you through the form(s).

5.1  Your details

This page will display the details we hold about the organisation you selected when you signed into your DfE Sign-in. 

5.2 Amounts of grant allocation

Once signed into the form, you will see and have the opportunity to download your local authority grant summary. If there are discrepancies between your allocation and the department’s records, you can submit an amended amount to be investigated. To do that you need to enter a valid amount along with agreeing to mandatory declarations via the relevant sub-form link on the local authority schedule page.

5.3 Your local authority schedule

You will be presented with a number of sub-forms within your local authority schedule page to complete. Select and complete all of the grants listed to finish that part of the S151 return.

You must also provide the required statement information for SFVS and confirm your assurance over the financial management of the schools you maintain for financial year 2023 to 2024.

5.4 Funding distribution

As part of your form submission, you need to confirm the grant funding retained, if any, including any underspend, overspend or carry forward to the 2024 to 2025 financial year.

5.5 Fraud cases

Fraud is defined as an intentional false representation, including failure to declare information or abuse of position that is carried out to make gain, cause loss or expose another to the risk of loss.

This includes cases where management authorised action has been taken, including, but not limited to, disciplinary action, civil action or criminal prosecution.

Further information about fraud can be found in Cabinet Office guidance.

5.6 S151 officer  statement declaration

You must ensure that a form for each of the grants listed in your local authority’s schedule has been fully completed. The S151 officer statement declaration will only be accessible for completion 24 hours after all funding lines in your local authority’s schedule have been completed fully with no outstanding issues. The S151 officer, or their delegated representative, must complete the S151 officer statement declaration sub-form for the S151 return to be finished.

5.7 Declarations page

Once you have completed each of your submission(s), you will be presented with mandatory declarations.

You will not be able to submit your form(s) without agreeing to the declarations.

5.8 Submission summary

You will be presented with a summary page that will allow you to check all your answers before submitting your form.

If you would like to change any answers, use the ‘change’ link that appears next to each data entry.

Select ‘save summary as PDF’ button, should you wish to keep a breakdown of the information you have entered in the form. You should do this before clicking the ‘Submit’ button.

5.9  Confirmation 

The final page confirms your submission and will provide a unique reference number.

Make a note of your unique reference number as this information will not be included in the confirmation email.

5.10  Amending your submission

If your submission is incorrect, you can resubmit your form(s) up until 5pm on 24 May 2024 when this form window closes for submissions. To do this, you will need to log in and resubmit your form.

Forms can be submitted or resubmitted until the deadline by selecting the link to the form. It will not be possible to grant any extensions to the deadline.

If you make a second submission, we will take the details of the most recently submitted form(s) and disregard previous versions. You will receive a new unique submission reference for an amended submission.

6. Enquiries  

If you have any technical issues related to this digital form please raise an ESFA enquiry form via the ESFA customer help portal.

For queries related to what you are reporting, please email LA.ASSURANCE@education.gov.uk.