These were:
- A resolution has been received from the outgoing trust (for voluntary transfers only).
- The incoming trust agrees to take on the academy (for all transfer types).
- (If the school is linked to a diocese) that a DfE delivery officer (DO) has spoken with the diocese about the incoming trust.
If legal requirements for an academy conversion aren’t met, DfE’s Judicial Review team can revert the academy order because the correct process was not followed. We assumed that there were similar implications for academy transfer projects.
Our transfers design
Based on our assumption that there are legal requirements for academy transfers, we added a legal requirements section to the project task list.
We used the summary list component and radio button component so that the section is consistent with other pages in our service.
Subject matter expert feedback
We presented our design to our subject matter expert (SME) who gave us some feedback. They told us that there are in fact no legal requirements for academy transfers, like there are for conversions.
Our SME sees value in DOs answering these questions. They believe this will give DOs confidence that they've spoken with all relevant stakeholders before taking the project template to advisory board.
Next steps
We'll decide whether to: a) iterate our design so it focuses less on legal requirements and more on giving DOs confidence in preparing projects for advisory board, or b) scrap the design and treat it as a lesson learnt for our business analysis process