Stone King LLP www.stoneking.co.

uk
Wellington House East Road Cambridge CB1 1BH T: 01223 451 070 F: 01223 451 100

Ms P Harvey Litigation Group Treasury Solicitors Dept One Kemble Street London WC2B 4TS

Our Ref Your Ref Direct Dial E mail Reply to Date

: RI/KN/104393/0004
: : : : : Cambridge 9th July 2012

Also by email

Dear Ms Harvey Beccles Free School: Sir John Leman High School v the Secretary of State for Education Pre Action Protocol for Judicial Review Reply requested by 1700 on 23rd July 2012 Thank you for your letters dated 26th and 27th June. You will note that we have copied our letter dated 12th June to the Seckford Foundation and invited it to make comment, which it declined to do. We will be copying this and all future correspondence to the Seckford Foundation as an interested party. We have separately received the email response from Ms Lovitt dated 29th June regarding our original request under the Freedom of Information Act for disclosure of information relating to the impact assessment process. Our client regards the Departments refusal to make that disclosure contrary to the public interest and we are instructed to request a determination from the Information Commissioner regarding that refusal, regarding which we will correspond separately with the Department. Our client reserves the right to raise the Departments failure to make sufficient disclosure as part of any judicial review arising. As regards the substantive issues of impact assessment, we request the following specific further information from the Department for Education regarding the costs, value for money and financial implications of the decision taken into account as part of their S9 impact assessment by ministers when making their decision on 25/5/12 (the Decision) to sign this funding agreement (the Decision). This information is required by our client as part of its consideration of whether to seek judicial review in light of your response to date.

Also at: 13 Queen Square Bath BA1 2HJ T: 01225 337599 F: 01225 335437 DX 8001 Bath

1. What analysis was made of the financial viability and value of money
for taxpayers in approving Beccles Free School (BFS) as a secondary school with very low projected student numbers? In particular please confirm the projected number of students agreed at the time of the Decision for the purposes of the calculation of GAG for the first years budget of the academy. We are aware that as of 27 June 2012 there were the following numbers of proposed students whose parents had expressed an interest for joining the school: #
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Stone King LLP is a limited liability partnership registered in England and Wales with registered number OC315280. Its registered office is at 13 Queen Square Bath BA1 2HJ. It is authorised and regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority. The partners are the members of the limited liability partnership. A full list of all partners is available at all offices.

16 St Johns Lane London EC1M 4BS T: 020 7796 1007 F: 020 7796 1017 DX:53314 Clerkenwell

Year 7: Year 8: Year 9:

10 15 12

On any reckoning this is a completely insufficient number of pupils with which to operate a state-funded secondary school on a viable and value for money basis. 2. Please provide a copy of the signed funding agreement in respect of BFS. 3. Please confirm the method used for calculating the funding of the first year of BFS operation and provide a copy of the Funding Letter or other document detailing that funding. Please include in that information the extent of any start up period grant made under the Funding Agreement, detailed under the following headings. i) Books, materials and equipment paid by formulaic allocation. ii) Other transitional costs. iii) Senior and middle management diseconomies funding. 4. If that first years funding for BFS was calculated under Clause 43 of the standard funding agreement (outwith any funding made in respect of the start up period) please confirm that ordinary clawback under Clause 43C will take place if applicable from the second year of BFS funding. Please also confirm that consequently Ministers gave proper and sufficient consideration as part of their impact assessment of the effect of any clawback that would occur in Year 2 of the BFS budget in the event of it not admitting its original projected pupil number in Year 1. Given that the original projected number for the School on the Carlton Colville site was 162 but only 37 applications have materialised, there is a legitimate public interest in whether the Department has calculated the financial risks and potential effects of clawback sufficiently. Given the issues raised above, all other schools local to the BFS and likely to be affected by its opening (including our client) have a legitimate interest in the funding for BFS being on an equivalent basis to other state schools, which is what the Department has repeatedly asserted and therefore is a legitimate expectation of those schools.

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Stone King LLP is a limited liability partnership registered in England and Wales with registered number OC315280. Its registered office is at 13 Queen Square Bath BA1 2HJ. It is authorised and regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority. The partners are the members of the limited liability partnership. A full list of all partners is available at all offices.

Given the urgency of resolving this issue, we request a response to this letter by 1700 on Monday 23rd July 2012. Yours sincerely

Roger Inman Partner Stone King LLP Cc Mr Graham Watson, The Seckford Foundation (by email only)

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Stone King LLP is a limited liability partnership registered in England and Wales with registered number OC315280. Its registered office is at 13 Queen Square Bath BA1 2HJ. It is authorised and regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority. The partners are the members of the limited liability partnership. A full list of all partners is available at all offices.