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Arts Council England (ACE) has confirmed it is investigating four cases of alleged fraud relating to the Culture Recovery Fund (CRF).

The £1.6bn support package was announced by the Department of Culture, Media, and Sport in July 2020 to help the cultural sector survive the economic impact of the pandemic and, when possible, reopen. The scheme offered three rounds of funding, administered by ACE, with final grant offers in March 2022.

To date, ACE said that across the whole CRF programme, it made over 6,000 separate funding awards of between £50,000 and £3m, resulting in 343 third-party objections and 84 allegations of fraud. One case of fraud has been confirmed and four cases are continuing to be investigated.

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ACE describes a third-party objection as "an expression of dissatisfaction received by ACE that doesn’t directly involve ACE or doesn’t directly involve the person contacting us, but does involve an organisation we fund".

The funding body said it investigates all allegations of fraud but would not disclose further details about the investigations, outcomes, or internal process as doing so could make it “vulnerable to more fraud in the future”.

In total, 7,185 unique organisations applied for grants from CRF – excluding capital applicants subject to stricter eligibility rules – with 4,473 (62.3%) successfully receiving funding.

A 2023 evaluation of the short-term impact of CRF found that, generally, it had been “well executed in relation to its aims,” achieving “a low level of fraud and maladministration.” The report noted that ACE's approach ran counter to the government’s own recommendation regarding fraud control in emergencies with a "robust but sometimes complicated" application process.

Fresh scrutiny

News of the ongoing investigations comes amid concerns over a £480,000 CRF grant application made in January 2021 by Manchester-based Primary Event Solutions —called Primary Security until October 2020—following a series of reports in The Mill that questioned the scope of the company’s activities within the creative sector.

ACE announced on 22 May that it would carry out "additional checks" on the company’s application after receiving "new information," with Greater Manchester Combined Authority also launching a "fact-finding exercise."

Primary Event Solutions' co-owner, Sacha Lord, has said he will "support and fully cooperate with the new checks".

Lord, who is Nighttime Economy Advisor to Greater Manchester Metro Mayor Andy Burnham and co-creator of the Parklife festival and The Warehouse Project, described claims made by The Mill as "defamatory and factually incorrect."

In a statement, Lord said he instructed lawyers to commence legal proceedings following The Mill’s first article on 16 May before announcing he would not pursue legal proceedings “for the time being” on 23 May.

Lord added that he was confident ACE’s investigation will exonerate him, noting that two separate audits of the use of ACE’s grant to Primary Event Solutions had previously concluded there had been no misuse of public money.

In a letter to GMCA, a group of Conservative council leaders have called for Lord, whose cultural advisory role is unpaid, to be suspended from all authority-related activities and for a full independent investigation by both the authority and police.

Burnham told the BBC the claims would "be looked at properly", calling for "some balance and recognition" of Lord's position within Greater Manchester's nightlife.