The Arts Council has withdrawn a Covid grant that was awarded to Sacha Lord’s Primary Event Solutions, and will seek to recover the £400,000+ support funding the company received.
Primary Event Solutions, where Lord was a director, received the grant from the Culture Recovery Fund, administered by the Arts Council during the pandemic. The company was legally wound up in 2023.
Lord is the co-founder of the Parklife music festival, The Warehouse Project, and in 2018 was made the region’s first night time economy adviser by Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham. He stepped down from Parklife and The Warehouse Project last year.
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He was subject to a controversial in-depth investigation by Manchester news website The Mill over the Covid funding, resulting in legal threats from Lord, and a mass fact-checking exercise from readers of the hyperlocal news site. The threatened legal action was later withdrawn.
In May 2024, the Arts Council revealed it would be ‘conducting additional checks’ into an application made for Covid support funding by Primary Event Solutions.
In a statement issued this morning, an Arts Council England spokesperson said: “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.
“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.”
Primary Event Solutions was awarded a total of £401,928 on March 29, 2021, according to the Arts Council’s records.
The Arts Council made awards from the fund to companies spanning a wide range of cultural and supporting services, including lighting, design, sound and events. In total the Arts Council made 5,824 awards and distributed £1.14bn of funding in total from the Culture Recovery Fund, with 3,557 individual organisations receiving funding.
The Arts Council had received a complaint about the grant to Primary Events in December 2022, but concluded that there had been no misuse of public funds. However, in May 2024 The Mill’s investigation was published, leading to renewed interest in the case and Lord’s threat to sue for defamation.
Following the story, the national arts body stated: “In light of new information that has been directly brought to our attention this week, we will be conducting additional checks on the application from Primary Event Solutions.”
Read More: Manchester Mill issues ‘community fact check’ plea following legal action over covid funding story
Lord told Prolific North in a statement:
“While we acknowledge the change in grant status, we appreciate that Arts Council England have found that there is no finding against the company that it deliberately misled the Arts Council in this application.
“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.
“That said, I remain concerned over inconsistencies and a lack of proportionality in the handling of this matter. 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.
“Furthermore, the invasion of privacy, particularly the targeted harassment of my wife during the final months of her pregnancy, has been deeply troubling and has only reinforced the importance of protecting and spending more time with my loved ones during this period of my life as a new father.
“I am incredibly proud of what we have achieved as a city-region – earning recognition as the ‘night-time capital of the UK’, ranking eighth in the World’s Best Cities for Nightlife, surpassing global destinations like Budapest and Buenos Aires, and successfully introducing initiatives which will transform our nightlife for the better, such as 24-hour night buses. However, the emotional toll and experience over recent months has given me the opportunity to reflect and gradually step back from my role in Greater Manchester. With heartfelt thanks to the Mayor and his team, I have decided to continue in this direction and embrace a new chapter ahead – championing the sector on a national level with fresh focus and energy.”
