The trust responsible for three Lubavitch state schools has received an official warning over its finances.

Mike Pettifer — director of the academies and maintained schools directorate of the Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA) — said concerns remained over “the weak financial management and governance arrangements” at the Lubavitch Multi-Academy Trust.

Writing to it last month, he warned that failure to comply with requirements could “lead to termination”.

The trust, which oversees the Lubavitch senior girls’, junior boys’ and junior girls’ schools in Hackney, had a deficit of nearly £1.5 million in 2019, according to its most recent accounts.

Mr Pettifer told the trust it had to complete redundancies by the end of March and put the new staff restructure in place by the beginning of May.

The trust was asked to ensure that it made a surplus in the 2020/21 and was in the black overall two years later.

In a statement, the trustees said they were “disappointed that, despite the progress we have made, the ESFA has issued a financial notice to improve”.

They said since the establishment of the academy trut in 2018, it had been working closely with the ESFA to address the financial challenges it had inherited. 

They were confident they had a clear recovery plan “which will address the challenges we face, enable the schools to become financially sustainable and meet the timetable for repaying the loans provided by the ESFA. Recent external monitoring visits have also confirmed that we are making good progress in improving the education of the children we serve.”