Due Diligence
Due Diligence Services
Warneford Consulting has created a bespoke ‘Estate’s Due Diligence’ package for those of our trust clients who are either converting from a grant-maintained to an academy school and for those Multi-Academy Trusts’ looking to expand.
The 2022 Schools White Paper has set out a route map and a time frame for the remaining 12,000 schools to convert by 2030.
For any school considering when to convert and whether to form or join an existing MAT, there are many forms of due diligence to undertake to ensure that each party is fully aware of their respective partners strengths and weakness, their assets, and liabilities.
We undertake a form of estate due diligence that involves our collecting, collating, and analysing the existing data held by the school, such as valuation figures, compliance and condition reports.
We then produce a gap audit and where required we will in any gaps in order to produce a fully dynamic and costed report, underwritten by a chartered surveyor, that our client can use as part of their negotiations with parties such as the ESFA, regional school commissioners and other stakeholders.
Trusts must look at due diligence in the same way they do when purchasing a house. Do not rely on the vendor’s surveys, instruct your own and only then can you confidently quantify and make an informed decision.
Further, this report can then be incorporated into the client’s existing strategic estate development plan, thus affording a bird’s eye view of each individual school’s assets and accompanying liabilities and how this fits at an overall trust level.
We can add energy data, expansion programmes and any other data that the individual trust may wish to be included.
We appreciate the value of the flexibility that our clients require when producing reports for different audiences and we have worked with our existing academy clients who have acted as a ‘critical friend’ to help ensure that we can meet all your due diligence and strategic estate management needs and meet the ESFA’s best practice guide for Good Estate Management for Schools (GEMS).
Get in touch about your Estate’s Due Diligence needs here
Read Tim’s Due Diligence article in Schools Week here
Watch our Estate Due Diligence 2D animation below
Watch our Capital Estate Management 2D animation below
Case Study
Acting on behalf of an existing Multi Academy Trust client, Warneford Consulting, were commissioned in early 2023, to undertake an estates due diligence service ahead of the potential merger. Download the case study here.
