The chair of governors of an embattled academy trust has declared “game on” and vowed to fight a government notice to end its funding.

The Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA) yesterday issued a notice to terminate the funding agreement of Durand Academy Trust, which runs Durand Academy in south London, and its boarding school in west Sussex.

It marked the culmination of a long-running battle over concerns about conflicts of interest in the trust’s complex governance arrangements.

Sir Greg Martin, the trust’s chair of governors and the school’s former long-standing headteacher, today told Tes he would be talking to lawyers about challenging the notice, which would see funding cut on 29 June 2018.

Sir Greg said: “We utterly believe this is unfair and unjust and we will defend ourselves.

“We are defending the silent majority - those with no voice and those parents and children who will be the losers if we do not do our job as governors to defend them to the best of our ability.

“It’s not for me. I’m doing it because if somebody did not stand up they are going to destroy the hopes and aspirations of a generation of children.”

‘They are going to have to earn it’

Yesterday’s notice said the trust had failed to comply with a number of requirements set out in a notice of provisional intention to terminate its funding agreement, issued in July 2016.

In the new notice, Peter Lauener, chief executive of the ESFA, said there had been “repeated and significant breaches of the funding agreement, which have not and will not be remedied to my satisfaction”.

Sir Greg told Tes he rejected claims that conflicts of interest had not been properly managed, said the decision to set up a private leisure centre on schools grounds had raised money for education at no cost to the taxpayer, and said he was “despised” because he had been successful and well paid.

Sir Greg said: “Nobody must be in any doubt that we are not going to let them ruin the education of any children. They are going to have to earn it, and it’s going to be very hard for them. Game on.”

The trust is already embroiled in legal action with Ofsted over a draft inspection report which briefly appeared on the Ofsted website in February and said the school should be put in special measures.

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