The Big Lottery Fund still has questions to answer over its decision to make grants to the Society Network Foundation and Big Society Network, according to Gareth Thomas, the former shadow charities minister.

Thomas, the Labour MP for Harrow West, was instrumental in securing a National Audit Office investigation into various grants to the BSN and SNF.

The NAO published a highly critical report last month, which said BIG did not do enough to challenge “ambitious targets” set for two projects, Your Square Mile and Britain’s Personal Best, which did not achieve their outcomes, and which were awarded grants of £830,000 and £1m respectively.

Thomas wrote to BIG asking for more information about its decisions to award the grants.

BIG responded, but Thomas said this did not do enough to answer his questions.

BIG response

A spokeswoman for BIG said she could not make the response public, but issued a statement outlining her organisation’s position.

She said funding for the Your Square Mile project was not made in isolation, but as one of a number of grants to test new approaches to community-led action.

“All of the other projects have been a success,” she said.

Similarly she said funding for Britain’s Personal Best was given alongside a number of other projects intended to build on the community legacy of the Olympic and Paralympic Games.

“Monitoring processes were in place to manage grant spend on these two projects,” she said.

She said that “Ultimately, and disappointingly, the project just didn’t work out,” but that no money had been spent improperly, and that “the NAO review of these grants did not find that we failed to adhere to our processes in soliciting and assessing these projects”.

She said details of how grants were awarded were available in BIG’s board minutes.

Response not good enough

Thomas said the response did not provide enough clarity, particularly around the process which led to the grants being made.

“It’s far from clear that there was genuinely no political involvement in the decision to hand out these grants,” he said.

Thomas said he wanted to be told whether the Big Society Network ever came up in conversations between ministers in the Cabinet Office and the fund’s chair Peter Ainsworth  - a former Conservative MP - and senior executives.

“I’d welcome an assurance it did not, but I’d also struggle to see that this was the case,” he said. “After all this project was set up with Cabinet Office support, and with government employees seconded to work on it.”

A spokeswoman for BIG has since told Civil Society News that there was “categorically no political interference” in the decision to make the two grants.

Thomas also said BIG needed to provide more detail about its decision-making process and monitoring process.

“They said that all board minutes are available,” he said. “I think that response is a bit weak. We need more information than that.

“It’s quite difficult to find yourself in a position to make a solicited bid for £1m. How did that happen in this case? Who made the initial approach and why did they do so?

“And why does the monitoring process appear to have been so weak, long after concerns had been raised about the effectiveness of the project?”

He also said he wanted to know what actions the new chief executive, Dawn Austwick, had taken to monitor the two organisations.

“This is the first time the Big Lottery Fund has been involved in significant controversy over a grant,” he said. “What did she do to prevent money being wasted?”

Other agencies involved

Thomas said he had received a response from Nesta, which also provided funding to the Big Society Network. At the time of the funding, Nesta was a non-departmental public body, however it is now an independent charity.

“Reading between the lines, their response suggested that if they had been independent, they wouldn’t have funded this project,” he said. “They didn’t say so specifically, but I certainly felt that might be the case.”

And he also repeated calls for a Charity Commission investigation into the Society Network Foundation.

“We don’t want political interference to hush that up,” he said.