The Social Investment Business approved a £300,000 loan to a community interest company connected to one of its board members, just nine months before the CIC went into voluntary liquidation.

It did not get any money back and in February this year was forced to write the loan off.

RNIB chair Kevin Carey is a member of the SIB board.  According to SIB’s latest accounts, for the year to 31 March, he was also a consultant for a non-profit company called AT Care, which was incorporated in 2008 and voluntarily wound itself up in June 2011, owing £332,000 to creditors as well as £74,000 to HMRC.

AT Care was set up in July 2008 as a non-profit-making body that aimed to design and develop assistive technology aids that would improve the lives of disabled and older people. Initial set-up costs were covered by a grant from the London Development Agency managed by NHS Innovations London Ltd, which was the ultimate holding company.

In its first eight months, to 31 March 2009, AT Care had grant income of £293,480 and posted a surplus of just under £11,000.

In the year to 31 March 2010, the company had grant income of £834,345, up substantially from the year before. It paid its directors £226,502 during the year, a jump from the £58,453 remuneration of the previous period.  

In April 2010 the organisation converted into a Community Interest Company, and continued to be predominantly grant-funded. But little more than a year later, the directors called in the liquidators.

Yet according to the 2013 accounts of Social Investment Business, which have just been published, the SIB gave a £300,000 loan to AT Care during 2011.

Under ‘related party transactions’, is written: “Kevin Carey is a member of the SIB board. He is also a consultant for AT Care. During 2011 AT Care received a loan of £300,000 which was written off on 1 February 2013 (31 March 2012: £304,290).”

Asked why SIB approved the loan when the company was so close to failing, a SIB spokeswoman said that the offer to AT Care was made on 17 September 2010.

“The investment became a cause for concern in the spring of 2011 after the last drawdown had been made,” she said. “The full amount of the loan was written off after the liquidation process was completed in March of the following year.”

Christine Asbury, who was chief executive of AT Care and is now CEO of Warwickshire care home provider WCS Care, told civilsociety.co.uk this morning that the reasons for taking out the loan were complicated and she could not respond with full details by today’s deadline.

Kevin Carey declined to comment.