New research reveals that LBWF has long been involved in Whitefield School’s finances, and this again raises questions about who knew what, when, about the child abuse scandal.

In recent discussions about the child abuse that occurred at Whitefield School between 2014 and 2017, the Labour leadership in the Town Hall has intimated, particularly in conversations with councillors, that LBWF has little or no culpability.

Whitefield, it is underlined, has always been run by a trust, first the Whitefield Academy Trust and then, from 2023, its successor, the Flourish Learning Trust, and so LBWF has only possessed limited power to supervise or intervene.

This seems plausible, but ignores one salient fact.

For while it is true that throughout LBWF has needed to respect Whitefield’s independent status, its equally true that, as new research shows, over the years LBWF has played a significant role in Whitefield’s finances.

The table appended below presents information from annual accounts submitted to Companies House, and lays out the basic facts.

It shows that, from 2014 to 2024, LBWF channelled large amounts of government money to Whitefield, specifically grant funding from, first, the Education Funding Agency’s Targeted Basic Needs Programme, an initiative to address rising pupil numbers, and later the Education and Skills Funding Agency.

Moreover, and this needs to be underlined, LBWF wasn’t acting here as just a convenient conduit, but in both cases was required to be the administrator, which inevitably meant working closely with Whitefield, for example on compiling bids and monitoring expenditure.

An issue that arises, therefore, is whether in the course of these interactions, particularly during and shortly after 2014-17, LBWF staff ever came across evidence of child abuse, and if they did, what then transpired.

Needless to say, there are obvious possible reasons why the staff concerned might not have come across such evidence. Their focus was first and foremost on finance, not how pupils were being treated. Anyway, use of the now notorious ‘calming rooms’ may have been covered up.

Yet, of all the interactions between LBWF and Whitefield after 2014, those about finance were probably the most regular and numerous, and accordingly likely offered plenty of scope for understanding how the school functioned, so it would be surprising if not even a whisper about the child abuse percolated out.

In conclusion, aspects of the Whitefield scandal still seem mysterious (for further discussion, see links, below).

For example, it is disconcerting to find that:

(a) the full truth of what went on at the school in 2014-17 remained hidden until 2024, and was only then uncovered thanks to the tenacity of the BBC reporter Noel Titheradge, with LBWF and other interested agencies apparently playing catch up;

(b) though LBWF was the statutory safeguarding authority, tasked with keeping children from harm, an examination of its own voluminous minutes and reports unearths very little mention of Whitefield until the last couple of years; and

(c) the joint LBWF and police investigation into the scandal which was launched in 2021 laboured for three and a half years… but produced no written report.

It is unfortunate – and highly regrettable – that this post cannot avoid muddying the water still further.