Arts Council England (ACE) has temporarily paused applications for one of its programmes as it continues to grapple with technical issues.
Yesterday, ACE announced that it had decided to temporarily pause applications for National Lottery Project Grants (NLPG).
In an update on Grantium, its online grant management and application portal, ACE said it continues to face technical challenges with the system.
Two weeks ago, Grantium stopped functioning at the same time as ACE experienced “an expected surge in logins from applicants seeking results of their Developing Your Creative Practice applications.
ACE has found no evidence of cybercrime but identified a problem relating to the “inability of Grantium infrastructure to operate with high traffic, when we’ve needed to apply important system updates”.
“We’ve been able to put solutions in place for payments for everyone and to support applications to smaller-scale programmes, but it’ll take a few weeks longer to offer a route for NLPG applicants,” it said.
‘No later than mid-September’
ACE said that while it can make payments to grant recipients for all programmes, it aims to restore the programme “as quickly as possible and no later than the middle of September”.
It decided to extend deadlines on several of its programmes affected by the outage and launched application forms for those with fewer applicants, using alternative software.
These include the Creative Foundations Fund, Libraries Development Framework, and Libraries Improvement Fund.
“We’re building a bespoke solution for NLPG because it’s a rolling programme with a high volume of applications,” ACE said.
“This is a vital fund, and we recognise how important it is to the sector.”
Accelerating application process transformation
ACE’s chief executive Darren Henley said: “We know this pause to NLPG is deeply frustrating news for those planning to apply in the next few weeks.
“I want to apologise most sincerely to them, and to everyone who’s experienced disruption in the last fortnight.
“We’ve set up a business continuity team with colleagues working hard at putting in place solutions.”
Henley said ACE will continue to support all payments and its other funding programmes.
“Our top priority right now is getting NLPG back open as quickly as possible and making sure those affected know what’s happening and when,” he added.
“Looking ahead, we’ll accelerate the transformation of our application process so that it’s simpler and more user-friendly for those we serve, but that’s not to dismiss the worry and anger of people affected right now.”
