Dear readers — attentive readers may remember that, last summer, we published an exclusive report revealing that Sheffield College was under investigation, following claims of exam fraud. Now it appears those chickens are coming home to roost. An eagle-eyed reporter at FE Week spotted that the college has set aside £5 million in its latest annual accounts, to prepare for the possibility of a funding clawback from the South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority. That’s today’s big story.
As well as that, we have some news about prominent Sheffield flag raiser James Henry Holmes, the start of the Sheffield Half Pint Marathon, and a lovely apartment in Greystones.
In case you missed it
For our weekend read, we published the first article to emerge from our new writers’ scheme — a fantastic deep-dive into the sudden lack of jobs for newly-qualified children’s nurses from James Connolly, who has been a nurse at Sheffield Children’s Hospital for more than 15 years. “An excellent, well researched piece written by someone who should know,” writes subscriber Chris Priestman. “It balances the personal effects with a close analysis of the causes and it's very clearly written. Well done to The Tribune for selecting James.”
And, as chance would have it, that wasn’t the only piece last week by a writer new to The Tribune. On Thursday, freelancer Chris Thomas delved into the murky world of illegal peptides, a “grey market” that has exploded in the city in recent years. “The team at The Tribune doing sterling work as ever,” wrote Emma Wilkinson on BlueSky. “This piece on Sheffield’s peptide boom is 😬🫣😳”
Our new writers’ scheme has reopened for pitches!
Now that the first article from our new writers’ programme is out, we’re reopening for pitches once more. If you’ve always wanted to have something published, but never known how to get started, then this is your chance. Use the form below to pitch an idea to us — telling us in brief what it is, why you’re interested in it, and how you would go about reporting the story.
The deadline to pitch to us is in a fortnight’s time: Sunday 20th September. To be eligible, this doesn’t need to be the first time you’ve ever written something that’s been published, but we will be looking for contributors who aren’t already regular freelancers or full-time writers.
We will give feedback to everyone, and if your idea is chosen we’ll pay you a full fee and work with you to edit your story and get it published. We can’t wait to bring some new voices onto The Tribune.
The big picture: Flower power 🌹
Members of Sheffield’s An-Nasiha Islamic charity handed out roses and chocolates to members of the public on Saturday to mark Mawlid, the birthdate of Prophet Muhammad. As well as marking the prophet’s birthday every year, the group also regularly hand out meals and hot drinks to homeless people and rough sleepers in Sheffield city centre.
The big story: Claws out for Sheffield College
Top line: Sheffield College has set aside millions of pounds, to prepare for the possibility that it might have to pay back a serious amount of cash to Oliver Coppard’s Combined Authority.
Details: As spotted by an eagle-eyed reporter at FEWeek, £5.18m has been set aside in the college’s accounts for the Adult Skills Fund (ASF) in the year 2026-27. This is “based on a risk assessment of areas included in an external funding audit”.
Recap: This audit was launched in July 2025 after concerns that qualifications in English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) were being awarded falsely. The combined authority has been looking into it “in accordance with [its] fraud response plan”.
Why fraud? As well as this being a serious issue for the college’s integrity, it raises big questions about cash the college may have obtained. Some of the funding the college receives from the Combined Authority is based upon students passing their courses, so inflated pass rates would lead to the college receiving money it wasn’t owed. This appears to be why the college is now setting a serious amount of cash aside for the event that the combined authority tries to claw it back. £5m is a big sum: almost half of the amount of Adult Skills Funding the college receives in a year.
The cliff edge: As The Tribune reported back in June, once the college started looking more closely at its ESOL department, achievement rates absolutely fell off a cliff (see graph).
Clear the decks: Shortly after this first came to light, two senior staff members in the ESOL department and a member of the college’s senior leadership team quickly made for the exits (though The Tribune understands that they weren’t fired. We asked the college about why these three people all left in a rush, but they didn’t respond).
A probe was launched, with the Combined Authority and City and Guilds awarding body piling in to have a look.
So how’s it going? Since then, it’s been quiet. Too quiet… For reasons unclear, this investigation into what should be a fairly straightforward matter has continued to roll on for over a year since the initial allegations came to light. One college staff member expressed bafflement to The Tribune, saying they thought it had wrapped up months ago.
Might this cash provision be a sign that the college is coming close to settling up? The Tribune has no inside knowledge, but we will say that £5.18m does look like a very precise figure…
We asked the college whether it was now accepting that fraud had taken part in its ESOL department, when the investigation would wrap up, and whether any other areas of spending had been cut back to make space for this provision.
They told us: “Money has been put aside as a contingency measure should the college be required to repay any adult skills funding on conclusion of an ongoing external audit. As the audit is ongoing, it would be premature to conclude whether any funding will need to be repaid and we will not be making any further comment at this stage.”
Get in touch: Do you know more about this? Please get in touch by emailing our reporter at victoria@sheffieldtribune.co.uk. Though we’re great at digging out damaging details in publicly available information, some of our most important reporting relies on the bravery of local people blowing the whistle. We’re happy to discuss you being anonymous if necessary and we take our responsibility to protect our sources very seriously.
The weekly Whitworth ✍️
Cartoonist James Whitworth with his take on the imminent rollout of new, bigger blue cardboard recycling bins in Sheffield.
Your Tribune briefing 🗞️
🇬🇧 Everyone’s favourite flag raiser James Henry Holmes was in the news again last week. Anti-fascist organisation Hope Not Hate published a piece about him which revealed that the Sheffield-based property developer stormed a Doncaster church during a Unite the Right demonstration in the city last month. Angry after bell-ringing interrupted their speeches, Holmes and others entered the church, aggressively confronting the vicar and forcing the police to intervene. Holmes has since been disowned by Unite the Right who said that “entering a house of God and confronting the vicar was out of order”.
In a complete coincidence, we asked Holmes some questions last week, including one about an incident in June in which he was allegedly involved in an altercation with a 17-year-old boy on Ecclesall Road South. When we asked police about the incident, they told us Holmes had been accused of verbally abusing the boy and driving in a way that caused him to fear an assault. Holmes says that he only did this after the boy made a rude gesture towards him. Officers confirmed that no violence had taken place and it was agreed that the incident would be resolved by providing advice to the suspect.
After we put these allegations to him, Holmes posted a video to Facebook in which he described The Tribune as “a little crappy thing that nobody’s ever heard of” and threatened to make a video he made of the Ecclesall Road South incident public. He has yet to do so.
🏫 Sheffield’s worst performing high school has a new name. Chaucer School in Parson Cross, which was rated as inadequate by Ofsted in 2022 and regularly gets the lowest grades in Sheffield, is now under the umbrella of the Mercia Learning Academy and will be known as Mercia Northridge School. The Mercia Learning Academy also runs Mercia School in Carter Knowle, which is one of the best performing schools in the country and has been described as one of the strictest schools in the UK. The Tribune covered Mercia back in January 2024 and again in October 2024 when they took over Newfield School in Norton Lees. If anyone at Chaucer/Mercia Northridge wants to chat, please get in touch.
🧫 A plaque has been unveiled to honour Cecil George Paine, a Sheffield doctor who in 1930 was the first medic to use penicillin, a treatment that has gone on to save an estimated 82 million lives. Paine, who was appointed as a lecturer at Sheffield Medical School in 1932, successfully treated an eye infection in two babies and a miner with a crude filtrate from a penicillin-producing mould supplied by his former lecturer, Alexander Fleming, at St Mary’s Hospital Medical School in London. Others, including Fleming, tried to use penicillin prior to Paine with little evidence of success. A plaque honouring Paine was unveiled at the University of Sheffield’s Jessop Building, a former Victorian hospital, on Friday.
Home of the week 🏡
This two-bedroom top floor apartment in S11 is situated in the Grade II-listed Greystones Hall. As well as a stunning newly installed “Shaker-style” kitchen, the flat also has allocated resident and visitor parking, and a private roof terrace. It is on the market for £250,000.
Things to do 📆
🎭 On now at the Crucible Theatre is William Shakespeare’s classic tragedy King Lear. Consistently ranked as one of his greatest plays, the story centres on an ageing monarch who divides his kingdom between his daughters, with catastrophic results. The title role is played by the legendary Ian McDiarmid, or as many people know him, Emperor Palpatine from the Star Wars films. Tickets are £15-£56 and the show runs until 19 September.
⚽ On Thursday evening, join award-winning artists Alina Akbar and Conor Rogers at the Millennium Gallery for a talk about the intersection of football and contemporary art. Timed to coincide with The Football Art Prize show currently on at the gallery, the artists will reflect on their creative practices, the ideas behind their prize-winning works, and how football has shaped and inspired their artistic journeys. The one hour talk is free and starts at 6pm.
🍻 On throughout September is The Sheffield Half Pint Marathon, a month-long celebration of beer, art, and independent spirit. Participants are invited to explore 26 of Sheffield’s finest pubs, taprooms and bars, plus a few surprise stops along the way. More than just a beer trail, the event highlights local breweries and independent art, music, and culture venues, while all proceeds go to support Sheffield Mind. The marathon runs until 30 September.
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