How to grow your trust with the Trust Capacity Fund

For trusts looking to apply to the Trust Capacity Fund, what requirements do they have to meet?

The Trust Capacity Fund (TCaF) is a grant that helps trusts develop their capacity to grow. It is focused on supporting high performance trusts to take on underperforming schools from education investment areas (EIAs). The government has committed up to £86m in trust capacity funding until March 2025, with a particular focus on improving standards in EIAs.

Growth projects 

To apply for the TCaF, trusts must have a clearly-defined growth project that has been approved by a regional director. The project must be committed to either:

• Taking at least one new school into the trust.
• Converting to academy status and taking on at least two new schools.

The following growth projects are also eligible for the TCaF:

• Applications from schools to convert to academy status and form a multi-academy trust (MAT).
• Sponsor matches for schools with directive academy orders.
• Trust mergers, including a single academy trust (SAT) joining a larger MAT and SATs joining together to create new trusts.
• Academy transfers from one trust to another.
• Local authority-established MATs.
• Approved free school bid proposals.

Growth projects that are not eligible for the TCaF include significant change applications (for example, changes to age ranges, published admission numbers or the addition of SEN resource bases), the physical expansion of an existing school within a trust and a school joining the trust as an associate member only. 

Activities

Activities funded by the TCaF must be focused on strengthening a trust’s central capacity, not improving individual schools. Examples of activities eligible for TCaF funding include:

• Establishing new central processes such as IT, finance and HR.
• Training and continuing professional development for staff.
• New staffing posts within the central trust team.
• New (or extending) staffing posts relating to trust-wide school improvement.
• Reasonable relocation costs for moving staff to new regions.
• Specialist advice, such as IT, finance or HR advice, to build permanent capacity for growth.

Examples of activities for which you cannot seek TCaF funding include:

• Capital expenditure, such as the purchase of assets (for example, buildings, furniture, fittings, IT equipment or refurbishment).
• Activities that are already funded from other sources, such as legal fees that are covered by the sponsorship/conversion grant.
• Time for pre-existing staff to undertake work that is already in progress as part of their current responsibilities.
• Consultancy costs for delivering and managing the whole TCaF project.
• Due diligence activities.

Who can apply?

In order to apply for the TCaF academy trusts and local authority-maintained schools in England must:

• be considered by the Education and Skills Funding Agency to be of sound
• financial health; as a minimum requirement, you must not have an open financial notice to improve;
• have an eligible growth project that is approved by a regional director. 

Successful schools that have not already met the standards of 90% phonics and 50% English baccalaureate entries will need to commit to improving their performance.

Applications for the 2023-2025 TCaF will be accepted from April 1, 2023.