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Esther Campsall

Legal Director

Legal Director in the Governance, funding & corporate team


Esther Campsall

Testimonials

I help trusts and schools manage complex change by providing practical advice on education governance and charity law, supporting compliance, effective structures and confident decision-making.

Esther is a legal director specialising in education governance and charity law. She has over a decade’s experience of advising multi academy trusts and schools on governance matters, including academy conversions, mergers, converting single-academy trusts into multi-academy trusts, updating Articles of Association and amending funding agreements. She runs Academy Company Secretarial workshops specifically for multi academy trusts and advises on internal governance procedures for schools and multi academy trusts.

Esther also advises on general charity law, including restructuring, merging, collaboration, contracts, trust law and property law in both an education and charity context. She liaises with the Charity Commission on all aspects of charity regulation, including registration, altering governing documents, serious incident reporting and trustee payments. She also regularly provides training to trustees on various matters, including trustees’ duties and responsibilities, restructuring and general legal updates.

My advice and articles

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Read Academy trust handbook – changes effective 2025
Feb 18, 2026 In Blog

Academy trust handbook – changes effective 2025

In line with its usual approach, the Department for Education published an amended version of the Academy Trust Handbook in the Summer of...

Read Volunteering is for volunteers, not workers; any confusion could be costly
Feb 03, 2026 In Blog

Volunteering is for volunteers, not workers; any confusion could be costly

The approximate annual cost of replacing volunteers with paid staff across the UK would be £16.4billion; they are a resource many...

Read Protecting trustees; is the law moving?
Nov 12, 2024 In Blog

Protecting trustees; is the law moving?

The law places considerable responsibility on charity trustees running charitable organisations with integrity and honesty and yet there...

Read Muddying the waters of volunteer status
May 22, 2024 In Blog

Muddying the waters of volunteer status

Volunteers are the lifeblood of many charitable organisations.   Those organisations could not exist without them, but neither could they...

Read Is this the end for the governing body? Life after the transfer into a MAT
Apr 18, 2024 In Blog

Is this the end for the governing body? Life after the transfer into a MAT

You would be forgiven for thinking that once a school has transferred into a multi-academy trust (MAT), the members of the governing body...

Read DfE making lighter reading for schools when it comes to governance – two new governance guides launched
Mar 20, 2024 In Blog

DfE making lighter reading for schools when it comes to governance – two new governance guides launched

So it’s big news but not big news.  Instead of maintained schools and academies having to sift through a joint Governance Handbook which...

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