The chair of the Big Lottery Fund’s risk committee was an adviser to Big Society Network when he was appointed to the BIG board by the Cabinet Office in December 2012, BIG has confirmed.

Tony Burton was an unpaid adviser to Big Society Network (BSN) on the Britain’s Personal Best project, which went on to win £1m from the Big Lottery Fund four months after he joined the BIG board.

However, Burton declared his interest in Britain’s Personal Best when he joined the BIG board and it was recorded in the declarations of interest register. Therefore he was not involved in the decision to solicit the bid from BSN or the decision to award it £1m.  

Burton runs his own management consultancy, Tony Burton Consulting.

BIG also said that even though Burton was an adviser to Britain’s Personal Best, he was completely unaware of Get In, another BSN project that had previously been awarded £300,000 by the Cabinet Office but failed to even launch.

“He had no knowledge of the Get In project at all,” said a spokeswoman from BIG.

The Big Lottery Fund withdrew the £1m grant for Britain’s Personal Best in February 2014 after its monitoring of the project showed that it was failing – but not before BSN spent £750,000 on it.  None of the money has been required to be paid back.

The National Audit Office has today confirmed that it has opened a new investigation into Big Society Network funding to establish whether the issues identified in its first study indicate “wider systemic problems”. Click here for more details on this.

Burton was ‘not responsible for risk evaluation of BPB’

In response to a Freedom of Information request, the Big Lottery Fund said that even though Burton was chair of BIG’s audit and risk committee, Burton was “not responsible for the audit and risk evaluation of the application from BSN”.

“Mr Burton was not present at any BSN meetings with the Fund … [and] was not involved in any capacity in the process of soliciting, auditing/evaluating or approving BSN’s BPB bid.”

Burton early supporter of the Big Society

Burton was an early supporter of the Big Society concept – when he was director of Civic Voice in 2010 he was a signatory to a letter published in the Daily Telegraph that was also signed by Paul Twivy, then-BSN chief executive; Giles Gibbons, who later became a trustee of Society Network Foundation, the parent charity of BSN, and Steve Moore, then associated with More Media but who later replaced Twivy as BSN chief.

NAO critical of BIG’s due diligence

The recent National Audit Office report on the public funding of Big Society Network criticised BIG for not consulting the Cabinet Office about the Get In project.

“The Cabinet Office had decided to withdraw funding from the Get In project run by the Society Network Foundation in December 2012 because the project had not achieved its objectives,” the NAO said.

“If the Big Lottery Fund had consulted the Cabinet Office in February 2013, it could have gained additional evidence to feed into its assessment of the Society Network Foundation’s application.

The Big Lottery Fund’s press office declined Civil Society News’ request to speak to Tony Burton.  A spokeswoman said: “His connection with Britain’s Personal Best was very limited in terms of this advisory role and he doesn’t really have anything further to say, so I can’t see the benefit of him speaking to you.”