Birmingham education charity's unfiled accounts investigated

The education trust operates the Al-Huda Girls' School

An independent watchdog has launched an investigation into an education charity which has not filed accounts for five years.

The Charity Commission has opened a statutory inquiry into the Birmingham Education Trust, which is based at the Al-Huda Girls' School in Saltley.

The trust funds and operates a school which promotes the teaching of Islam to Muslim girls.

The most recent Ofsted report says the school has 45 girls on roll.

In March 2019, the Charity Commission opened a compliance case into the trust to examine its repeated failure to comply with its statutory duty to file its accounts and annual returns.

"Wider concerns" were then found, including that the charity was operating in breach of its governing document in having only two trustees who were husband and wife, causing concerns about "potential unmanaged conflicts of interest", the charity commission said.

An action plan was issued to address the concerns, but the trustees have failed to demonstrate progress and the case has been escalated to a statutory inquiry, which opened on 21 July, the watchdog said.

The new inquiry will look into if the charity has been operating for exclusively charitable purposes; if the financial controls of the charity are adequate and their funds can be accounted for, and if potential conflicts of interest and connected party transactions have been properly managed.