Successive British Governments have promulgated policies and initiatives that have not only resulted in the marketisation of education but have, arguably, constructed a democratic deficit in relation to who represents the local in a neoliberal educational context. The article utilises a conceptual framework which encompasses notions of civility and somatic norms as well as evaluative models of deliberative democratic systems. The article illuminates the democratic deficit impact of these policy changes on social groups, such as parents or community members of low socioeconomic status, women and non-white Others. In doing so this research illustrates empirically a democratic deficit which is manifested in the school governance of the Co-operative Aligned Academies Trust (CAAT). It would appear local participatory school governance practices have been systematically disabled due instrumentalist and economistic New Public Management practices and neoliberal reforms. Democracy can be conceived as illusionary in the empowered space and as silencing, civilising and exclusionary (anti) democracy in the public space.