How Labour's spiteful VAT raid and a mysterious takeover by a City speculator led to overnight closure of a 135-year-old private school: GUY ADAMS investigates

Above the front door of one of Dorset's finest Palladian manor houses, a Union flag flutters at half-mast. Inside, the lights are on. But absolutely no one's at home. Ringing the bell produces no answer.Peeking through the letterbox, I spy a desk covered with half-finished paperwork and a basket full of golfing umbrellas. I call 'hello!' to no avail.Behind me lies 50 acres of parkland containing, among other things, a 25-metre indoor swimming pool, a swanky modern equestrian centre, an indoor gymnasium, six tennis courts, two chapels, a dining hall, a refectory, music studios, a small theatre and several dozen minibuses, most of which have been left unlocked.What there doesn't seem to be, however, is a single human being. The vast, sprawling property instead sits eerily silent.All of which is very strange indeed. For I am standing slap bang in the middle of Leweston School, where 577 rosy-cheeked children and 214 members of staff should right now be throwing themselves into the second half of Michaelmas term.Founded by nuns from Belgium in 1891 and based at its current site just outside Sherborne, Dorset, since just after the war, Leweston – alma mater of actress Dame Kristin Scott Thomas – was until very recently looking optimistically towards the future.On its website, alongside news of pupils winning top honours in recent national sailing and rowing championships, the £45,000-a-year school informs prospective parents: 'The world your child is moving into cannot be predicted'.How grimly ironic that slogan now looks. Because last Tuesday, five days before the end of half-term, Leweston announced without prior warning that it was to close immediately. Apparently, it had completely run out of cash. Leweston School near Sherborne, Dorset, has closed suddenly after running out of money, leaving almost 600 pupils without a school The 135-year-old independent school announced its immediate closure just days before the end of half-termThe consequences are devastating. Pupils, some of them weeks away from mock GCSEs and A-levels, had academic plans thrown into chaos. Parents were left severely out of pocket, some to the tune of hundreds of thousands of pounds.Staff are still owed, but are likely to never see, October's wages. Employees unlucky enough to have been living on-site must now somehow find themselves not just a job but a new home.So sudden was the 135-year-old school's collapse that a team of local contractors carrying out maintenance work learned overnight that they wouldn't be paid.They promptly packed up their tools and left, leaving several teachers, who lived with their families in school buildings, without hot water or central heating.'I literally got an email with a screen [capture] of a letter that wasn't even on letterhead,' said the former head of physics, Robert Nejako, of the way the closure was communicated. 'It was poorly written, misspelt, all of it. Shambles doesn't begin to describe what this was.'A week on, Leweston School's campus resembles the Mary Celeste. Piles of unmarked homework and half-empty coffee mugs can be seen on classroom tables.You can peer through windows into boarding house studies which still have unmade beds. Walking through deserted quads, past empty sports pitches, brings to mind one of those zombie apocalypse movies where human beings have suddenly vanished.Most unnerving of all is the realisation Leweston isn't the first and certainly won't be the last independent school to hit the wall in the weeks and months to come.A staggering 149 have now closed their doors since the start of last year, according to the campaign group Education Not Taxation, which blames the trend on Labour taking a hatchet to their finances by slapping 20 per cent VAT on fees, abolishing business rate relief on private school buildings and ratcheting up the cost of National Insurance for employers.Some 33,000 children have left the sector since the start of 2025, the group says, outpacing Government predictions by a factor of four and adding to the pressure on state school places. Tens of thousands of employees have already lost their jobs.The trend is nowhere near to ending, either. One leading educationalist I spoke to this week said: 'There are maybe 200 more private schools in the UK in danger of ending up like Leweston. Hundreds of parents, pupils and staff with banners come together to object to the sudden closure Pupils and parents hold banners as they campaign to save the school 'The question is whether they will close in an orderly manner, at the end of term, or suddenly run out of cash like this place.'Predatory investors are circling the sector, he says, seeking out troubled schools which can be bought for a song and swiftly closed down, leaving the owners in control of valuable property assets. Many UK schools have recently fallen into the hands of companies from Qatar and China.All of which brings us back to Leweston's chaotic demise. It came ten months after the school, which had historically been run as a charity, was taken over by a mysterious private company named Concept Education, promising 'strong and stable' leadership along with millions of pounds of money for new facilities.At the start of term in September, parents were offered the chance to save cash by paying the whole year's fees up front. Loot would then go towards an ambitious 'five–year plan' involving the creation of a new sports pavilion and swanky sixth form centre. Mysterious benefactors were said to be on the verge of pulling out their chequebooks.Perhaps understandably, given what actually occurred, Concept is now facing intense scrutiny, with local MPs calling for the Department for Education and Charity Commission to intervene.Edward Morello, the Lib Dem MP for West Dorset, says he is 'outraged' by what he called the 'complete disregard' the company has shown to parents and employees. Simon Hoare, who represents North Dorset for the Tories, tells me the firm's behaviour 'stinks'.'Several things tell you something is not quite right,' he says. 'The first is the absolute radio silence from Concept. They didn't tell Ofsted. They didn't tell Dorset Council, despite large number of SEND children at the school.'They didn't tell staff or parents or the local MP. Despite a number of us calling and chasing them, asking for information, they have said nothing at all since the school shut. They are behaving like people who have something to hide. It's a masterclass lesson in how not to do something.'Hoare has spoken to one parent who paid two years of sixth-form fees for her son in August and is now almost £100,000 out of pocket. Morello says he knows of a family with three children who had paid four years of fees up front, or around £500,000. Appalled parents and pupils attended a demonstration on the premises on Monday, clutching placards saying: 'Concept stole our education.'The main target of anger is Hugh Dickinson, the firm's founder and CEO. A former Irish Guards officer who previously worked in the City, his image adorns a poster I find propped up against the sign at the end of the school's driveway. It depicts him furtively clutching two large sacks of gold and a crumpled business plan.Dickinson's involvement in the private school sector can be traced back to 2019, shortly after Concept was formed, when he gave an interview to Spears Wealth Management magazine at his favourite watering hole, The Cavalry & Guards Club, off St James's in central London.In that article, he bombastically promised to revolutionise the industry by setting up a 'no frills' school that could 'deliver weekly boarding at around £20,000 a year, without scrimping on the essential quality of education offered'.That never came to pass. Instead, after Covid, Dickinson – a Roman Catholic with three children – decided to focus on Catholic schools, which he believed are particularly threatened by dark clouds looming on the industry's horizon. In 2022, Concept took over one such institution, The Marist School in Ascot, via a parent company named Concept Education Holdings Limited. That company is in turn now controlled by four employees of Highvern, an investment firm based in the tax haven of Jersey.Leweston then came onto Dickinson's radar.The school was, on the face of things, doing perfectly well: having gone from girls-only to mixed sex in 2018, it had roughly doubled pupil numbers to more than 600 by 2024. Then, the annual report said it was 'nearing capacity'.Yet under the bonnet, trouble was brewing. For despite being outwardly popular, especially with aspirational families drawn by relatively modest fees, its finances had become increasingly wobbly.Between 2022 and 2025, the school's wage bill increased from £4.2million to £6million, while the number of staff on the payroll rose from 187 to 214. While it was breaking even in some years, and losing a few hundred thousand pounds in others, a significant gap had opened up between fee income and expenditure, which had to be filled via one-off donations from benefactors.In 2024, £594,000 came into the coffers via this route but it still recorded an annual loss of £400,000. Some £3.8million of outstanding loans were sitting on its books. Then came the final straw – VAT on fees, which reduced pupil numbers by several dozen. By the summer of 2025, annual losses had widened to £700,000. Some families face losses running into hundreds of thousands of pounds after paying fees years in advanceDickinson's pitch to take over was as follows: the Leweston School Trust, a charity which ran the school, would retain ownership of its buildings and land, while a new private company which he had set up would be placed in charge of the school's day-to-day running. It would then pay rent to the charity in return for using the property.'It all seemed very credible,' recalls one member of staff. 'They had a five–year plan to build new facilities and said that investors were lined up willing to pump in cash. I remember seeing a blueprint for a new sports pavilion. We were also told some wealthy Catholic benefactors would chip in. They gave the impression the money was all in place.'At one point, it was claimed that Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg, the former Tory MP and a prominent Catholic, would help with fundraising, although he said this week that he had never heard of the company involved, let alone agreed to raise money for its school.But in December last year, a most peculiar series of events occurred at the Leweston School Trust, which owns its property assets: 12 of the trustees, all longstanding governors of Leweston, resigned overnight, leaving the organisation in the hands of just three, brand-new trustees.One was Hugh Dickinson, another his brother, Harry, who works in finance, and a third was James Hall, a property consultant. All three also worked at Concept, the company running the school. In other words, the charity which owned Leweston's premises was now entirely controlled by the for-profit company that was leasing them.By March, the operating company's finances were starting to wobble. That month, HSBC registered a charge with the company, believed to relate to an overdraft facility that was now being used intermittently to pay the wages of staff.When the summer term came around, the financial situation had become so precarious it would have been prudent to admit defeat and close over the summer holidays, allowing students time to make alternative arrangements and helping staff find new jobs. But Dickinson elected to push on, making increasingly desperate pleas to potential investors.Asked why he kept the school's financial position secret, even as parents were paying this year's fees, Dickinson tells me: 'Had we announced earlier that the school's future was in doubt, many families would understandably have made alternative arrangements, potentially prompting an exodus of pupils and bringing about the very closure we were working so hard to avoid.'He added that the company had 'continued with highly sensitive and confidential funding discussions which gave every indication of being successful until very late in the day'. However, he added: 'When the anticipated funding ultimately fell through, there were insufficient funds available to meet the school's obligations'.While Dickinson accepts that the sudden collapse of Leweston has been disastrous for employees and parents, along with almost 600 pupils, he added: 'It is crucially important to distinguish between a rescue attempt undertaken in good faith that ultimately failed and an allegation of deliberate deception. We firmly reject the latter.'Others aren't so sure. MPs Hoare and Morello say the Charities Commission ought to launch a probe into whether the relationship between Dickinson's company and the charity which owned Leweston's buildings is compliant with rules designed to prevent trustees from benefiting from their role.As for the future of the stunning manor house, Hoare tells me: 'I am not a conspiracy theorist but the school occupied a large property, in an attractive part of the country, which is immensely valuable. So you have to ask: who might benefit from it closing?'Time will tell. In the meantime, parents at hundreds of private schools educating tens of thousands of children are left to wonder where, exactly, the axe might fall next.