Mara Quill of the Trust Notice Reception Office has found the ideal response to a demand for better financial governance: improve the filing system until it can supervise the finances.
The notice from the Department for Educational Paperwork has issued Mighty Oaks Filing Trust a notice to improve its financial governance and financial management. Mara Quill, director of the Trust Notice Reception Office, welcomed the intervention as “a valuable chance to improve the way we receive instructions to improve.”
The notice was published on 2 October 2026, applies to England and consists of a letter with an annex running to eight pages. Quill called the length “reassuringly serious”. Her office has already placed it in a folder marked Notices, before opening a second folder marked Improved Notices.
Lionel Signoff, deputy director of the Office for Administrative Reassurance, said this demonstrated immediate progress. “We have located the document, acknowledged the document and invited the document to a meeting,” he said. “The next step is to assess whether the assessment has sufficient governance.”
Quill’s improvement plan now has three priorities: preserve the notice, circulate the notice and produce evidence that the notice was circulated. The fourth priority, under review, is deciding who may approve the evidence that proves the circulation. It has been assigned to a panel still awaiting terms of reference for its terms of reference.
The Department for Educational Paperwork’s notice is about financial governance, but the reception office sees a larger opportunity. “Money must be controlled,” Quill said. “Fortunately, paper is already under control. It sits in a cabinet, and nothing escapes without a signature.”
By Friday, Quill expects the trust to have a complete improvement trail: notice, folder, subfolder, acknowledgement and a receipt for the acknowledgement. The final document will confirm that the process has been improved, managed and filed. Financial governance will at last be watertight, with every document accounted for and nobody required to account for anything.
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