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ACE revokes Sacha Lord Covid grant over ‘unintended oversights’

While acknowledging the decision, Lord criticises ‘inconsistencies and a lack of proportionality’ in Arts Council England’s management of the case.

Mary Stone
5 min read

A Covid-era grant of more than £400,000 has been withdrawn by Arts Council England (ACE) following concerns raised last year over the extent to which the recipient company operated within the creative sector.

ACE said that after “a thorough review” of a 2021 Culture Recovery Fund (CRF) application from Manchester-based Primary Event Solutions (PES), it has decided to withdraw a previously awarded £401,928 grant and is seeking to recover the money.

The funding body first announced that it would carry out “additional checks” on the company’s application in May after a series of reports in The Mill newspaper questioned the scope of Primary Event Solutions creative sector activities, noting that the company, which entered liquidation in September 2023, was called Primary Security until October 2020.

Primary Event Solutions’ co-owner, Sacha Lord, who described the claims made by The Mill as “defamatory and factually incorrect”, previously said he was confident the investigation would exonerate him and that two separate audits by ACE’s counter fraud team had concluded there had been no misuse of public money.

‘A small number of unintended oversights’

Responding to ACE’s decision to revoke the funds, Lord said he “acknowledged the change in grant status” but insisted that ACE had not found evidence that Primary Event Solutions had “deliberately misled” the funding body in its application.

“However, given the company’s current status in liquidation, and recognising that there are a small number of unintended oversights which have impacted the application’s clarity under the criteria, we accept that the grant status has been updated,” Lord conceded.

While Lord stressed that the company and its former directors have “continued to work closely” with ACE, he also used his statement to criticise the funding body and the nearly nine-month investigation, which followed two previous reviews of PES’s application by the ACE counter fraud team.

Lord expressed concern regarding “inconsistencies and a lack of proportionality” in ACE’s management of the case.

“Not only has this application been reviewed twice previously by the organisation’s counter fraud team, which, after examining the financial evidence and invoicing, concluded on both occasions that it was compliant with grant guidance, but the length of time taken to bring the matter to a close raises cause for concern, and these delays have taken a significant, personal toll on myself and my family,” said Lord.

‘No intention to mislead’

Reflecting on the “emotional toll” he has experienced in recent months, Lord said he decided to “gradually step back” from his role in Greater Manchester, where he was nighttime economy advisor to Metro Mayor Andy Burnham, and will instead champion the sector “on a national level”.

Burnham said that he accepted Lord’s resignation “with regret” last night and praised his former advisor, who is also co-creator of the Parklife festival and The Warehouse Project, for his contribution to the region’s night time and cultural sectors while stressing he did not receive payment for his work with Greater Manchester Combined Authority.

Like Lord, the mayor also expressed doubts over ACE’s decision, saying: “Given that the Arts Council’s counter fraud team previously found no misuse of public money, it is not clear to me why [it] has now reached this decision.”

Burnham, who previously claimed there was a “sense of a bit of a campaign that’s being launched” against Lord, said, “Sacha has accepted there were inaccuracies in a grant application, and I believe him when he says there was no intention to mislead and that he made no personal gain from the grant.”

Custodians of public money

Announced by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport in July 2020, the Culture Recovery Fund (CRF) was a £1.6bn support package designed 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. 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. 

ACE said that across the whole CRF programme, it made more than 6,000 separate funding awards of between £50,000 and £3m.

As of 17 December 2024, ACE said it had received 350 third-party objections and 87 allegations of fraud related to the CRF, with one case of confirmed fraud and two cases continuing to be investigated.

“We take our role as custodians of public money very seriously and have processes in place to assess applications,” said ACE.

“If concerns are raised to us about a grant application or award, we investigate and take the appropriate action.”