Life Wirral boss may have spent public cash on family’s companies

The chief executive of a school for children with special educational needs appears to have diverted public money into other business interests linked to him and his family.

Alastair Saverimutto ran the Life Wirral school until it was closed earlier this year after an investigation by BBC Panorama exposed mistreatment of children by staff.

A forensic accountant who examined documents leaked to the BBC said it appeared money from Wirral Council had been used to fund the CEO and his family’s other business interests, that include a gym and a coffee shop.

The 54-year-old, who was sacked as a Merseyside Police special constable last year over undeclared debts, has not responded to the latest allegations despite repeated attempts to contact him.

The Department for Education (DfE) said the BBC’s latest findings were “deeply disturbing”, adding that it was looking at further action to stop such situations happening again.

Wirral Council said it was not aware of money being used for anything other than pupils’ education.

Between 2021 and 2024, the authority paid about £2.2m to place pupils at the school, at an annual cost of between £50,000 and £150,000 per child.

That ended when an undercover investigation by Panorama found evidence of children being mocked, bullied and abused.

Reporter Sasha Hinde also filmed the school’s head of operations, Paul Hamill, claiming it was “the cash cow” for Mr Saverimutto’s other businesses interests.

Panorama – which has seen leaked invoices, bank statements, details of rent payments and lease agreements – asked Nicholas Parton, head of forensic accounting at Opus Pear Tree, to examine the school’s finances.

He said: “From the financial information we have seen, it appears that local authority funding intended to benefit the pupils of the school has been used to finance a gym and/or coffee business operated by Mr Saverimutto and his family.”

Despite the amount of public money going into Life Wirral, undercover filming by Panorama revealed concerns about a lack of funding for the school.

Parts of the building were in a poor condition and often the internet did not work, which meant pupils were sometimes unable to complete tasks set.

One senior member of staff joked about the poor quality of the school’s sensory room, saying: “We’ve got a doll’s head on top of a freezer, a bean bag, and a lava lamp. This is the sensory room?”

The gym, in Claughton, Wirral, was used by Life Wirral pupils after the school opened in 2021.

By the summer term of 2024, however, only four of its 19 students were using it.

ASAV Fitness, owned by members of Mr Saverimutto’s family, also ran classes for women in the gym, selling memberships for £50 a month.

Mr Saverimutto owned and ran SHE (Sports, Health and Education) C.I.C., a community interest company limited by guarantee, meaning shareholders cannot pay themselves dividends.

Rent for the gym was paid by SHE, which also received fees paid by Wirral Council to place pupils at Life School.

Between March 2022 and June 2024, SHE spent £76,000 on rental payments to a private landlord for the premises used by the gym.

Invoices and bank statements also reveal that SHE spent at least £60,000 on extending the gym.

“The Engine Room” opened in 2023 and included four state-of-the-art treadmills.

Planning documents show Mr Saverimutto said the gym would give specialist sports and health education to aspiring young athletes aged eight to 18, and include three classrooms and a sensory room.

But social media posts showed the gym extension was used for daily workouts by customers of ASAV Fitness, including “shred weeks” and “Hyrox training”.

Panorama understands the proposed sensory room was never built.

Rehana, whose grandchild attended the school, told the BBC: “I was told when we first went to be shown around that he would have full use of the gym, that there would be sensory things put in there for him to use when he needed to regulate.”

But Rehana said she believed her grandchild only got to use the gym five or six times between May 2022 and May 2024.

She said it was mostly used by members of the public, and that “we were often waiting outside for the class to finish, and then sometimes we would have to leave because the next class had come.

“I never saw another pupil in the gym.

“It was just a means to an end to build his empire. He was taking money from the public purse.”

Mr Saverimutto owned Kiwi Beverages, which opened in November 2023 and sold coffee and brunches to the public.

Between June 2023 and June 2024, SHE spent £17,000 on rental payments to a private landlord for the premises used by Kiwi Beverages.

The premises also included meeting rooms used by some of the school’s pupils and members of the public.

Based on invoices and bank statements seen by Panorama, it is understood SHE spent about £20,000 on building work and business start-up costs for Kiwi Beverages.

Planning documents show Mr Saverimutto said the coffee shop would provide work experience, training, and a barista course.

In May, lawyers for Mr Saverimutto told the BBC the building in which the ASAV Fitness gym and Kiwi Beverages coffee shop were based was “one of two site locations for the school”.

They said their client did not accept that the school lacked basic resources for teaching and the facilities were continually being developed.

Mr Saverimutto has not responded to the most recent allegations about his business finances.

There is no suggestion of wrongdoing by other members of his family.

Panorama can also reveal Mr Saverimutto declared himself bankrupt in 1996.

When contacted by the BBC, Wirral Council said it was not aware of this and said responsibility to undertake due diligence checks laid with the DfE.

However, the DfE confirmed its due diligence checks did not examine the financial background of independent schools’ prospective proprietors.

Mr Saverimutto’s company Life Schools Ltd, which became a wholly owned subsidiary of SHE Ltd in January 2024, never filed full accounts before liquidating it in August.

Life Schools Ltd and SHE C.I.C. went into liquidation with combined liabilities of almost £500,000.

Since Panorama’s initial investigation, the school and gym have shut down, and three former school employees have been charged with offences including assault and abusive behaviour.

In October, one of those former members of staff, Elliot Millar, pleaded guilty at Wirral Magistrates’ Court to five offences including common assault of an adult, a public order offence, two counts of assault by beating, and common assault.

Earlier this month, he was jailed for 12 weeks.

Responding to Panorama’s investigation, the former director of the Council for Disabled Children, Dame Christine Lenehan, said: “It cannot be remotely acceptable that public money destined for children’s education is funnelled to other things.

“The local authority was charged to give children an intensive education service.

“The children did not receive this service and that is a fundamental misuse of public money.

“This is another example of the sector not being regulated effectively.

“The initial Panorama programme revealed failures in safeguarding, and now this suggests the misuse of public funds.

“The whole system has failed.”

Wirral Council paid up to £150,000 a year for one pupil for eight hours of schooling a week.

For this student, it said the school had neither provided good value for money nor delivered the service that had been agreed.

Catherine Hardinge, a partner at Price Bailey chartered accountants, is a specialist in CIC compliance.

She said some of the rules governing CICs may have been broken.

ASAV Fitness was incorporated in July 2019 and became a wholly owned subsidiary of SHE in July 2023. Kiwi Beverages was incorporated in January 2024 when it also became a wholly owned subsidiary of SHE.

Ms Hardinge said because CICs had an “asset lock” that prevents the company being used for private gain, “if assets were transferred from SHE and to ASAV Fitness, then they should have been required to pay a fair market rate for them”.

She said ASAV Fitness appeared to be an ordinary trading businesses and could not see anything that indicated they were running for the benefit of the community.

A DfE spokesman said Panorama had “exposed how these young people were let down by those who should have been keeping them safe”.

The spokesman added: “As a new government, we are also concerned that the rules on who can run schools are too loose, particularly special schools for some of the most vulnerable people in our society.

“We want to break down barriers to opportunity for children with [Special Educational Needs and Disabilities] and are looking at further action to ensure that situations like this do not happen again.”

Additional reporting by Sasha Hinde