Festivals

Sacha Lord steps back from Manchester advisory role after grant withdrawn

Featured Images: Arthur Edelmans on Unsplash & Saw0310/ CC BY-SA 4.0

Sacha Lord has resigned as Manchester’s night time economy advisor after Arts Council England opted to withdraw a COVID-19 grant awarded to Primary Event Solutions, in 2021.

Lord held a 30% stake in Primary Event Solutions, which was wound up in 2023. The business had received a grant of £401,928 (€480,000/$501,000) during the pandemic as part of the Culture Recovery Fund. Lord is also a founder of The Warehouse Project and festival Parklife, which takes place at Heaton Park in Manchester.

The Arts Council said it had initially received an allegation of fraud relating to the application in July 2022. At the time, a review of the expenditure related to this application was completed and identified no misuse of public funds.

However, following the receipt of new information sent to the Arts Council in May last year, additional checks were conducted on the application specifically. This information was reported by local email newsletter, The Mill, which published a story detailing the allegations. Lord then threatened to sue The Mill for defamation.

It was found that a clause from the grant’s terms and conditions was breached, which said that the organisation had supplied the Arts Council with ‘information that was wrong or misleading, either by mistake or because you were trying to mislead us’.

The Arts Council said that it was not required by this clause to determine whether the misleading information was supplied deliberately, but that it had withdrawn the grant because of this breach.

“We take our role as custodians of public money very seriously and have processes in place to assess applications. If concerns are raised to us about a grant application or award, we investigate and take the appropriate action,” said an Arts Council England spokesperson.

“Following a thorough review of the application that Primary Event Solutions submitted to the Culture Recovery Fund in 2021, our decision is to withdraw the grant that was awarded and we are seeking to recover this money.”

In a statement, Lord said that the situation had taken “a significant, personal toll” on him and his family.

“While we acknowledge the change in grant status, we appreciate that Arts Council England has found that there is no finding against the company that it deliberately misled the Arts Council in this application,” the statement read.

“The company and its former directors have continued to work closely with Arts Council England to evidence that grant funds were used appropriately to support staff wages and company stability during the pandemic. United We Stream, for example, was a hugely successful event which raised £583,000 to support cultural organisations, businesses and individuals affected by lockdown. Supporting such businesses has always been my only mission in my various, unpaid roles.

“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.”

Though the decision has been accepted, Lord added that he remained concerned over “inconsistencies and a lack of proportionality in the handling of this matter” as the application had been reviewed twice previously which concluded that “it was compliant with grant guidance”.