The DfE spent more than £500,000 transferring a single academy to a new sponsor in 2017-18, new government figures reveal.

Reddish Vale Technology College was one of the record 255 academies listed as being re-brokered in the last financial year.

The £552,700 grant was used to fund the college’s transfer from the Reddish Vale Academy Trust to the South Manchester Learning Trust, which took place on 1 September 2017.

Meanwhile, the data also shows that the November 2016 re-brokering of the Hampton Academy in Richmond to the Richmond West Schools Trust, which cost £118,800 in grant funding in 2016-17, cost a further £414,000 following year, taking the total to more than £500,000.

The 20 biggest grants for academy transfers listed for 2017-18 include three schools that were removed from AET, England’s biggest academy trust.

The DfE gave £335,000 in grant funding for the transfer of Millbrook Academy in Gloucestershire from AET to the Greenshaw Learning Trust, while the re-brokering of Everest Community Academy in Hampshire and Cordeaux Academy in Lincolnshire both involved grants of £150,000.

The figures also show that removing Perry Beeches V, a free school in Birmingham, from the controversial Perry Beeches Academy Trust was the fourth most expensive re-brokering in 2017-18. Its transfer was funded with a £200,000 grant.

The figures also show that transferring two Croydon schools from Reach2, England’s biggest primary-only academy trust, to local MATs cost a total of £220,000 in grant funding.

The news that Reach2 schools were being re-brokered came just four months after the DfE gave the trust permission to open 22 new free schools.

Of the 255 academies transferred in 2017/18, the majority – 206 – did not involve any DfE grants.

The 2017-18 re-brokering figures include the costs of staff re-structuring, legal services and re-branding, but exclude deficit payments, capital costs and statutory redundancies.

The biggest transfer grants for 2017-18, as listed by the DfE, were as follows: