National Audit Office to scrutinise Unboxed

An official probe into the value for money provided by the £120m Unboxed festival will be conducted by the National Audit Office (NAO).

In a letter published today the Comptroller and Auditor General of the NAO, Gareth Davies, said he expects to produce a report on the costs and benefits, management and planning of the project by the end of the year.

The move follows a critical report on the government-funded festival by the DCMS Select Committee which concluded that the investment was "an irresponsible use of public money" given the government’s own admission that it does not know what it is for.

It was reported last month that visitor numbers for four of the 10 events of the festival have been 238,000, compared with a "stretch target" of 66 million.

Chair of the DCMS Select Committee Julian Knight said: “That such an exorbitant amount of public cash has been spent on a so-called celebration of creativity that has barely failed to register in the public consciousness raises serious red flags about how the project has been managed from conception through to delivery. 

"The NAO’s investigation will bring welcome and thorough scrutiny and help get to the bottom of how so much tax-payer money could be frittered away for so little return.”

DCMS has said that it "[does] not agree with the select committee's views", adding that more than four million people have engaged in Unboxed programming so far, with numbers set to rise further.