Trust Board and Governance

In our Multi-Academy Trust (MAT), a single Trust is responsible for all of the member academies (15 academies as at March 2021).

The member academies and Chairs of Governors currently comprise:

Academy	Chair of Governors
Moseley Park & Heath Park	Dr Afua Adu Boateng
Woden Primary	Laura Nicholls
D’Eyncourt Primary	Carl Fox
Coppice High School	Mark Taylor
Westcroft & WVTC	Paul Bellamy
Broadmeadow Special	Susan Ellick
Eastwood, East Dene & Coleridge	Ray Griffiths MBE
Vale of Evesham School	Jackie Summerfield-Constable
Kingfisher School	Sam Gould
Riversides School & Newbridge School	Dee Milbery

The MAT consists of the Members and the Directors.

Members and Directors

There are 3 Members of CLPT, The Members are akin to the shareholders of a company. They have ultimate control over the academy Trust, with the ability to appoint some of the Directors and the right to amend the Trust’s Articles of Association. The Members are responsible for holding the Directors to account.

There are 7 Directors. Directors are responsible for the governance functions such as setting the direction of the trust, holding the CEO/headteachers to account and ensuring financial probity. As charity Directors, they also ensure that they are complying with charity law requirements. Academy Trusts are charitable companies and the Directors are company directors and must comply with company law requirements.

CLPT Directors sit on a Trust Board which requires them to regularly attend meetings, manage conflicts of interest, seek advice from the academies leadership teams and Executive Directors and ensure that the academies have appropriate procedures in place for reporting financial information. The Trust Board has delegated some of its decision-making to a Finance and Personnel Committee and an Audit and Risk Committee to assist in discharging its functions.

CLPT Articles of Association state that the Chair of the Board of Directors will also be a Member, thereby ensuring a link between the two layers.

(* These are also Directors who sit on the Trust Board)

Members	Appointment Date
Melvyn Pope	28th October 2011
Robert Turton*	13th March 2015
Phillip Marshall	13th March 2015

Directors

Graham Parker

Robert Turton (Chair)

Rachel Nash

Sofia Zamir

James Nichols

Emma Woodhouse

Jeremy Vanes

Local Governing Bodies

CLPT has local governing bodies (LGBs) and Local Executive Governing Bodies (LEGB) and its membership are referred to as ‘governors’.

The details of what has been delegated from the Directors to local governors is detailed in a CLPT Scheme of Delegation. Even though some functions have been delegated to LGB’s, the Directors still remain accountable and responsible for these functions. (n.b. local governors are not Directors of the Academy Trust).

In Wolverhampton and Worcester there are individual LGBs and LEGBs.  In Rotherham there is an Executive LGB which oversees the three primary schools.

Governance For New Schools Joining the Trust

Structural change, in any area of life, creates turbulence and the structural change of a school, from maintained to academy status, is no different. With this in mind, the Trust has moved to ensure that the implications for the governance of all schools undergoing conversion are minimised. There is however a difference, in our approach, between the process we adopt for converter and sponsor-led academies.

With the former, we do not make any changes to the composition of their governing body, other than adding two Trust nominees. It may well be that those nominees are already existing members of a particular governing body or they may be new additions.

For a sponsored-led academy, the Trust will add two nominees to the governing body and over a period of time reduce the number of governors to a minimum of nine voting members. This model will remain in place until the academy in question receives a “good or better” Ofsted judgement.

The Trust, in consultation with Governing Bodies, has articulated the Delegations for decision making so that there is clarity on responsibilities and who undertakes important tasks such as appointments, much in the same way as the LA has done previously.