City of London Academies Trust

"I've worked with a fair few payroll systems. Neo's is definitely the best one"

- Michael Fisher, Senior HR Business Partner, Payroll, Systems and Analytics, at City of London Academies Trust.

Term-time-only staff, part-timers, exam invigilators and a Harpur Trust v Brazel holiday pay obligation on top. For a trust of 1,200+ staff across six London boroughs, automating that calculation removed both the manual work and the risk of getting it wrong.

City of London Academies Trust at a glance:

• 11 primary, secondary and sixth form colleges across six central London boroughs
• More than 1,200 staff, including a significant number of seasonal employees
• Another school joining January 2026; ambitions to grow to 20 academies
• Payroll contract transferred to neo in 2025

City of London Academies Trust tenders for a third-party payroll provider every three years, so it knows what the market looks like. Michael Fisher, Senior HR Business Partner for Payroll, Systems and Analytics, calls the 2025 transfer to Neo "A hugely positive development".

The mechanics were easy - both services run on the iTrent platform, and "Neo did a lot of the work for us." What changed was everything around it. "The fundamental thing that has changed is the customer service element, the responsiveness. It's the fact that I can go and ask queries using the ticketing system and we are treated like a normal human being, and they don't just tell me the answer, they'll explain the reason why as well."

Most queries are resolved the same day, and the ticket history has become an asset in itself. "If I had a problem two months ago which has resurfaced, I can just type in what it was in the search bar and find it straight away."

The biggest operational win is holiday pay. School payrolls are complicated by term-time-only staff - teaching assistants, part-timers - who, following the Harpur Trust v Brazel ruling, are entitled to holiday pay if they work overtime. Michael identifies who qualifies; Neo applies a holiday percentage automatically on top of earnings. "That has been fundamentally brilliant." The risk of over- or underpayment is gone, along with a large amount of manual work.

Training new users takes about an hour with online guidance and videos. Higher-level issues go to a half-termly meeting, which Michael prepares for by gathering feedback from colleagues.

If you’d like to learn more about Neo People Management’s Payroll services, please feel free to contact enquiries on enquiries@judicium.com or 0345 548 7000