Auditors identified significant failings at a school that is now facing closure, according to a newly published report.
The failings were found in an internal audit which was a follow up after previous checks highlighted 17 areas of concern at Middle Street Primary School, in Brighton.
When the follow up audit took place, in the autumn term, several problems were still to be adequately addressed. A report said: “Actions were required to
- declare and effectively manage conflicts of interest
- improve financial controls regarding raising purchase orders, evidence of monthly payroll approval and maintaining a contract register
- improve the process of new starters to ensure that all pre-employment checks are completed and appropriate information is retained to evidence this
- improve the process of exit interviews for staff leavers to ensure feedback and insight is shared appropriately with senior leadership and
- maintain and implement a data protection policy
“At the time of the audit the school was being governed through an interim executive board (IEB), approved by the Department for Education in June 2025.”
The initial audit was carried out as the school’s financial position was deteriorating under head teacher Rob Cooper and the governors who were replaced last June. The school leadership at that time was criticised at a recent council meeting.
The concerns were spelt out in an “internal audit and counter fraud” progress report relating to the final three months of last year – from October to December.
They are due to be presented to Brighton and Hove City Council’s Audit, Standards and General Purposes Committee at Hove Town Hall next week.
The report to councillors said: “Our review found that 11 of the 17 actions arising from the previous audit had been implemented.
“The issues raised during the audit relate to transactions and recruitment that occurred before the IEB. We note that since the IEB has been in place controls have gradually improved.”
The school became the first in Brighton and Hove to have an IEB appointed in place of the previous board of governors – a move only permitted when a school is causing concern.
The appointment of an IEB has to be signed off by the Education Secretary – and in the case of Middle Street it followed a series of problems.
Parents raised safeguarding concerns about the school and its leadership – and some withdrew their children from the school as a result.
High staff turnover fuelled agency costs for supply cover, contributing to a financial deficit that has soared to more than £400,000. The school’s annual budget has been about £1 million.
Funding is broadly based on pupil numbers and the falling number of children at the school has made the deficit almost impossible to repay.
While many parents welcomed the arrival of the IEB, some have said that if the council had acted sooner in appointing the board, it might have been possible to save the school.
A final decision on whether to close the school – the oldest school in Brighton and Hove – is due to be made at a special council meeting on Thursday 21 May.
Neither internal audit report has been published. The findings of the latest report are included in the agenda papers for the council’s next Audit, Standards and General Purposes Committee meeting.
The committee is due to meet at Hove Town Hall at 4pm next Tuesday (21 April). The meeting is scheduled to be webcast.
So the misuse of OUR money or lack of oversight which we pay for is so unedifying that we are not allowed to examine it!
What steps are being taken to recover our costs?
Considering that Hove Park School has recently announced a reduction in PAN from 300 to 180, I am not sure that this school would have been saved, regardless of the poor leadership. School consolidations are primarily driven by a very low birth rate.
The PAN reduction at Hove Park wasn’t that recent – it took effect in 2022. Under the previous Green led Council.
While the demographic decline is real, Middle Street’s situation isn’t just about numbers. It is clear that there were significant safeguarding and financial issues that had been allowed to persist. That would suggest issues with the council’s capacity to monitor and support schools. It’s understandable that some schools are now exploring academy trusts if they feel the local authority can’t provide the oversight and support they need.
Wait for it… It is never Liebour… never… it is anyone else’s fault, not Liebour ok ok ok… Shall talk about Tory austerity and the i360… total shambles… Benjamin, quick, come to defend your lot! But don’t make it an intellectually incapable comment like “it is ad hominem” because it makes me think of you having a SpongeBob-like voice.
Ha, maybe if I have a cold my voice would get that nasally! Insults don’t make good conversation, so I challenge people to do better. If it’s just a conversation debating point of view, you’ll find I’m quite happy to meet them in good faith.
In that spirit, the direction of school and PAN numbers has primarily been driven by a falling birth rate, something that is acutely felt in Brighton, as I mentioned below. Austerity could indicate across the board demographic drops, but what the data is suggesting is a fundamental shift in when people choose to have children. That links in with Second Demographic Transition theory, Housing Costs being a barrier (another issue acutely felt in Brighton).
None of that is particularly political, and the main barrier to house building is generally a geographical one, although, I’d quite like to live in a pineapple under the sea!
It’s Captain Disingenuous!
Benjamin, that’s a lazy take.
Blaming falling birth rates alone ignores the glaring reality in this report: serious mismanagement, weak oversight, and safeguarding concerns that drove families away. A £400k deficit on a £1m budget isn’t demographics—that’s failure.
Plenty of schools face the same population pressures without ending up in this state. The difference here was leadership and governance, not just fewer kids being born.
Trying to shrug this off as inevitable lets the people responsible off the hook. It wasn’t.
JamesGPT, you said that “Plenty of schools face the same population pressures without ending up in this state. The difference here was leadership and governance, not just fewer kids being born.”
Brighton’s fertility rate is 0.98, one of the third lowest in England according to ONS data and has remained in the top ten lowest for 20 years. Nationally, England is at it’s lowest since 1938. Reading the article, the deficit is described as being because funding is “broadly based on pupil numbers” and that “The falling number of children at the school has made the deficit almost impossible to repay”, so, alongside the data, is also in agreement with my point.
Unfortunately, JamesGPT is showcasing a false dichotomy, presenting complex issues as binary choices. Hove Park is a current, local example that directly counters JamesGPT’s whataboutism.
Benjamin, this isn’t the thoughtful mic-drop you think it is—it’s you hiding behind statistics while sidestepping the actual point.
No one is denying falling birth rates exist. That’s not the debate. The issue is your insistence on treating them as *the* explanation, when the evidence in front of you explicitly includes financial mismanagement and safeguarding failures. You’re not adding nuance—you’re stripping it away.
Quoting fertility rates doesn’t magically erase a £400k deficit on a £1m budget. That kind of hole doesn’t appear just because fewer babies are born—it happens because the people in charge failed to adapt, failed to plan, or flat-out failed to do their jobs. Other schools are dealing with the same demographic trends without imploding. You keep dodging that.
And calling it a “false dichotomy” is ironic, because you’re the one forcing a single-cause narrative. You’ve picked your explanation—demographics—and you’re clinging to it while dismissing everything else as secondary or irrelevant. That’s not balanced analysis; that’s confirmation bias with a veneer of ONS data.
As for the Hove Park example, one counterexample doesn’t prove your point—it just shows variation exists. If anything, it reinforces the argument that outcomes depend on leadership decisions, not just birth rates.
Right now, you’re not “meeting in good faith”—you’re deflecting.
The article makes it explicitly clear. The main driver is because funding is “broadly based on pupil numbers” and that “The falling number of children at the school has made the deficit almost impossible to repay”. Other reasons exist, but this is the main one.
The PAN reduction at nine primary schools and the closure of two others due to falling pupil numbers directly contradicts the assertion that “Other schools are dealing with the same demographic trends without imploding”. BHCC’s own contemporaneous documentation of the demographic trend and its planned responses further makes this point and explains the primary driver further.
Nope, the numbers weren’t falling before Rob Cooper’s mismanagement like this. The drop came when people starting leaving in droves and no one fully explored why, despite numerous complaints from parents and staff. The deficit was so extreme because of how he ran the school. No one doubts the birth rate drop and yes, it’s impacting all schools, but it’s wild to me that you’re so invested in birth rate numbers when the whole article is about failure of management and the governing board and their now well-evidenced role in the downfall of our precious school. There is now clear evidence that Rob played a fundamental role in the level of debt the school ended with.
Indeed, from what’s been articulated before, he certainly didn’t help matters either. Very much a compounding factor. Would better financial management have saved this school? Hard to say either way, and I’m sure people will have opinions.
Nuance is needed. Numbers dropped for very specific reasons: parents who no longer felt their children were safe at the school, no adequate process of complaint when things went wrong, loss of confidence in management when long-standing members of staff left in droves and an astonishing lack of transparency or even basic communication as to why. All of this created a very unstable environment and many parents felt there was no option but to leave. The IEB was brought in way too late, the council was made aware of the severity of issues at the school long before action was taken, and the extent of the damage to the school and it’s community could have been avoided if due diligence had happened. The falling birth rate is a part of this picture but not for the reasons Benjamin cites. The city likely can’t sustain the amount of schools it has, but Middle Street wouldn’t have been the one to close, based on the numbers alone pre Rob Cooper.
Makes sense to me. The compounding factors all created this perfect storm.
Maybe we would not have lost a school should intervention went in earlier, should management have been better, should reporting was actioned. Very reasonable take.
The article itself doesn’t really support a single-cause explanation, and that’s where Benjamin’s argument falls short.
Yes, falling pupil numbers clearly matter—when funding is tied to enrolment, a sustained drop will put any school under pressure. But the report also highlights serious governance, financial control, and safeguarding failures. Those aren’t minor side issues; they directly affect whether parents trust a school enough to keep their children there.
That’s the key point Benjamin keeps skirting around. Falling birth rates don’t *cause* safeguarding concerns, weak oversight, or a £400k deficit on a £1m budget. Those are management and governance problems. What they *can* do is make a bad situation worse by removing the financial cushion a well-run school might otherwise have.
The comments from parents and the audit findings suggest this wasn’t just a school quietly struggling with demographics—it was one where confidence collapsed. Once families start pulling children out because they feel something isn’t right, numbers fall faster than any demographic trend alone would explain.
So the more grounded way to look at it is:
demographics created pressure, but leadership failures accelerated the decline and likely determined which school ended up closing.
Framing it as “mainly birth rates” risks letting decision-makers off the hook. At the same time, ignoring the wider demographic reality would also be incomplete. Both factors clearly played a role—but they didn’t play equal roles at every stage of the school’s decline.