23-03-2025
Sacha Lord quizzed about £400,000 Covid grant his company was told to pay back
Sacha Lord has been quizzed on TV about the £400,000 Covid recovery grant his company has been told to pay back.
The Parklife and Warehouse Project founder resigned as Andy Burnham's night time economy adviser earlier this year after it was revealed that the grant would be withdrawn. The Greater Manchester mayor defended Mr Lord saying he was treated 'very unfairly'.
The Arts Council has said it is now seeking to recover the £401,928 of taxpayers' money paid to Primary Event Solutions in 2021.
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The cash from the Culture Recovery Fund was part of a £1.57bn rescue package to help 'cultural organisations' after the pandemic.
In January, the Arts Council revealed that the grant would be withdrawn because information supplied was 'wrong or misleading'.
Appearing on the BBC's Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg programme, Mr Lord was asked if he had got things wrong.
He said: "No, they've actually come out after nine months and said there was no intention to mislead which we're delighted about so we're going to work with the liquidators now to see what we can do."
Asked whether he will give the money back, Mr Lord said: "I'm technically not a shareholder director of the company now so we need to work with the liquidators to work that through."
Mr Lord was a director and a minority shareholder of Primary Event Solutions, but the company was wound up in 2023.
Earlier this year, after Mr Lord claimed there had been 'no finding against the company that it deliberately misled the Arts Council in this application', the Arts Council issued a new statement saying the application had breached a clause in the terms and conditions.
According to an Arts Council spokeswoman, the clause that had been breached read: "You have supplied us with any information that is wrong or misleading, either by mistake or because you were trying to mislead us."
The spokeswoman said: "Following Sacha Lord's public statement, we can now confirm that after our thorough review, we found that the following clause from the grant's terms and conditions was breached: 8.3.8 You have supplied us with any information that is wrong or misleading, either by mistake or because you were trying to mislead us.
"We are not required by this clause to determine whether the misleading information was supplied deliberately. However, we have found that the applicant, Primary Event Solutions, breached this condition, whether by mistake or otherwise, leading us to withdraw the grant.
"As we said in our statement, we take our role as custodians of public money very seriously. We have stringent processes in place to scrutinise all the applications we receive, both at point of application, and should information be brought to light at a later time."
