Guidance

Section 151 (S151) officer return: guidance for completion of the digital form

Published 2 May 2025

Applies to England

Introduction

Local authorities are responsible for financial regularity in schools. The section 151 (S151) officer (usually the chief finance officer (CFO)) of the local authority is responsible for making the necessary arrangements for local financial and management controls, under S151 of the Local Government Act 1972.

Under these arrangements, the S151 officer must ensure that the grant monies received from the Department for Education (DfE) for pre-16 and post-16 grants (non-dedicated schools grant) are used for the purpose for which they are intended.

About the grants

The requirements for each grant are detailed in separate forms. You must complete a form for each of the grants listed in your schedule before submitting your S151 officer statement declaration. Only once all sub-form grant funding line submissions are confirmed as received, with no outstanding issues, will the section 151 officer be able to access and complete the mandatory submission declaration and conclude your local authority’s full return.

The S151 officer is also required to submit the schools financial value standard (SFVS) assurance statement to DfE each year, confirming that they have in place a system of audit for schools that gives them adequate assurance over their standards of financial management and the regularity and propriety of their spending.

For more information, and instructions on completing your returns, read this guidance document. If you need more help with completing your returns, contact us through the Customer Help Portal.

When to complete your submission 

The deadline for submitting all funding forms, including the SFVS assurance statement and your S151 officer statement declaration for the financial period of 1 April 2024 to 31 March 2025, is 5pm on 30 May 2025. It would be helpful and appreciated if you can complete your submissions earlier where possible. 

The S151 statement declaration is not available until 24 hours after all the individual grant forms are complete but still needs to meet the 30 May deadline.

Accessing the form 

Please read the below sections before accessing the S151 officer returns digital form to complete your submission for 2024 to 2025.

Before you start  

Make sure you have:

• a DfE Sign-in account that is linked to your organisation – if you have not used DfE sign-in before you’ll need to create an account
• your spend details for each grant in your schedule for the financial year 2024 to 2025
• details of unspent grant funding that may be recoverable by DfE
• details of any instances of fraud or theft

For your SFVS assurance statement return, you will need to know:

• the number of eligible schools in the local authority, broken down by school type (such as nursery, primary, secondary)
• the number of eligible schools that have completed the SFVS, broken down by school type
• the number of eligible schools that did not complete the SFVS, both with and without exemptions, broken down by school type
• the number of eligible schools against each exemption reason
• the name and URN of each school that did not complete the SFVS without an exemption
• the number of related party transactions (RPTs) entered into by schools with a value greater than £40,000

DfE Sign-in

Sign in to your DfE Sign-in account

Follow the below steps to access the form through your DfE Sign-in account:

1. Access the online form. When prompted, enter your DfE Sign-in credentials (your username and password) for authentication.
2. Choose the organisation for which you are completing the form (this is only required if your account is linked to several organisations).
3. The next page will display the details we hold about the organisation you selected when you signed in. This will show the name, address and unique identifier of the local authority, as well as the name and email address of the person who signed into DfE Sign-in.
4. If these details are correct, select ‘Continue’ to go to the next page.
5. If you believe these details are incorrect, you can contact us through the Customer Help Portal and we will investigate. You can still proceed with your submission.

To complete the form, your account must be connected to the local authority you are completing the form(s) for. You do not need to add any services in DfE Sign-in; it is used only for authentication.

If you do not have a DfE Sign-in account

If you do not have a DfE Sign-in account, you will need to create one by completing steps 1 to 6 below: 

1. Access DfE Sign-in page and select ‘create a DfE Sign-in account’
2. Enter your name and email address (use a valid business email address that contains your name – please note, we are unable to accept generic emails, such as ‘admin’ or ‘info’).
3. We will send you an email to verify your email address. Copy the code from this email and paste it into the box on the verification page.
4. Create a memorable password that must be 14 characters. A good way to create a secure and memorable password is to use 3 random words. You can use numbers, symbols and spaces.
5. Sign in using your new credentials.
6. Follow the next step instructions outlined in ‘Adding an organisation to your DfE Sign-in account’ below.

Once your request to access an organisation has been approved, you can follow the steps outlined under already have a DfE account to complete the form.

You may have noticed the term ‘approver’ when creating your account. An approver is someone at your organisation responsible for controlling who has access to DfE Sign-in and the services within the system. It is usually a senior person, such as an administrator or a manager.

For security reasons, you will need authorisation from one of your local authority’s approvers before you can access the form.

Adding an organisation to your DfE Sign-in account

To add a new organisation to your DfE Sign-in account, follow steps 1 to 6 below:

1. Login to your DfE Sign-in account.
2. Select ‘Organisations’ from the tab at the top of the page.
3. Select ‘Request access to an organisation’ from the ‘Related actions’ on the right-hand side of the page.
4. Enter the name of the local authority you wish to add.
5. Select the organisation.
6. Select ‘Confirm’.

Your request will be sent to the approver(s) of your organisation. If you do not already have an approver, your request will be actioned by the DfE Sign-in support team.

Once your request to access an organisation has been approved, you will be able to access the form(s).

If you need further assistance

If you need help with DfE Sign-in, use our DfE Sign-in help service where you will be able to request further assistance. When raising a support request, select ‘Other.’

If you are having problems accessing the form(s), you can contact us through our Customer Help Portal.

Completing the form 

When authenticated through DfE Sign-in, you will find a ‘save and continue’ button on each page of the form(s). If you have to sign out of a form or your form is opened for an extended period before submitting it, you can resume your submission when you sign back in.

By selecting ‘save and continue’ on each page this will take you through the form(s).

Your details

This page will display the details we hold about the organisation you selected when you signed into your DfE Sign-in. 

Amounts of grant allocation

Once signed into the form, you will see, and can download, your local authority grant summary. If there are discrepancies between your payments and the department’s records, you can submit an amended amount to be investigated. To do that you need to enter a valid amount along with agreeing to mandatory declarations through the relevant sub-form link on the local authority schedule page.

We will investigate the discrepancy and contact you with our findings.

If we accept that our figure is incorrect, we will amend it and ask you to complete a new sub-form for that funding line.

If we conclude that our figure is correct, we will ask you to complete a new sub-form for that funding line, agreeing to the figure shown.

Your local authority schedule

You will be presented with a number of sub-forms within your local authority schedule page to complete. Select and complete all of the grants listed to finish that part of the S151 return.

You must also provide the required statement information for SFVS and confirm your assurance over the financial management of the schools you maintain for financial year 2024 to 2025.

Funding distribution

As part of your form submission, you need to confirm the grant funding retained, if any, including any underspend, overspend or carry forward to the 2025 to 2026 financial year.

Fraud cases

Fraud is defined as an intentional false representation, including failure to declare information or abuse of position that is carried out to make gain, cause loss or expose another to the risk of loss.

This includes cases where management authorised action has been taken, including, but not limited to, disciplinary action, civil action or criminal prosecution.
Further information about fraud can be found in Cabinet Office guidance.

S151 officer statement declaration

You must ensure that a form for each of the grants listed in your local authority’s schedule has been fully completed. The S151 officer statement declaration will only be accessible for completion 24 hours after all funding lines in your local authority’s schedule have been completed fully with no outstanding issues. The S151 officer, or their delegated representative, must complete the S151 officer statement declaration sub-form for the S151 return to be finished.

Declarations page

Once you have completed each of your submission(s), you will be presented with mandatory declarations.

You will not be able to submit your form(s) without agreeing to the declarations and to do this, you will need to tick each statement box to confirm your agreement. 

Submission summary

You will be presented with a summary page that will allow you to check all your answers before submitting your form.

If you would like to change any answers, use the ‘change’ link that appears next to each data entry.

If you’d like to save a breakdown of the information entered in the form, click the ‘Save Summary as PDF’ button before submitting. Make sure to do this before hitting the ‘Submit’ button.

Confirmation 

The final page confirms your form has been submitted successfully. You will receive a unique reference number against your submission, followed by an explanation of what happens next.

You will also receive an email confirming successful submission of your claim.

It is important you make a note of your unique reference number as this information will not be included in the confirmation email.

Amending your submission

Forms can be amended up until the deadline by selecting the link to the form. The deadline cannot be extended. Once we receive a new submission, any previous submission(s) for that form will be overwritten.

You will receive a new unique submission reference for an amended submission.

Enquiries  

If you have read this guidance and have any questions relating to this return, you can contact us through the Customer Help Portal.