An award-winnng academy headteacher broke contract rules to spend £25,000 on refurbishing her office, it has emerged.

The Silver Birch Academy Trust (SBAT) was set up in 2012 with its first school, Chingford Hall Primary Academy, opening on July 1.

A second academy under the trust, Whittingham Primary, opened in Walthamstow in 2013.

Earlier this year, the Education Funding Agency (EFA) was contacted by two whistleblowers in relation to possible financial irregularities at the trust.

An investigation into the spending of headteacher Patricia Davis, who is paid £170k per year and is a previous winner of the Headteacher of the Year award, identified “concerns relating to poor procurement practice”.

It also emerged that the chair of governors worked for a company which was awarded an IT contract at the school without it being put out to tender, as required by the trust’s own rules.

At the Walthamstow school, £25,000 was spent on furniture for Ms Davies’s office meeting room.

The purchases included a £4,800 table, 14 executive conference armchairs at a cost of £5,000, a fridge costing £1,600 and four plant pots totalling £780.

Any work which exceeds £25,000 must be put out to tender.

No evidence of fraud was uncovered and the report made a series of recommendations.

For more on this story, see next week's Guardian - out Thursday