ACE seeks to reassure funding applicants

Arts Council England (ACE) has been quick to respond to media interest in its processes for assessing applications to become part of its National Portfolio of regularly funded organisations (NPO). It has conceded that “an immediate and thorough review of affected applications” did take place in June when it came to light “during quality assurance” of its National Portfolio funding process, that information supplied by 66 of the 1,333 applicants for NPO status had not been uploaded to its internal system together with their application forms. According to ACE, the review told them that “…in most cases, we already held the information concerned and it had been considered in the assessment of the application. Where this was not the case the additional information would have had no impact on our funding decision.”

The missing information varied from case to case, but included financial information and other documents that applicants had chosen to supply in support of their applications. AP asked ACE why its assessors had not rejected all incomplete applications, but was told “There were no ‘incomplete’ applications. In all instances where a required document, such as a financial statement, hadn’t been uploaded our review found that that information was held elsewhere or had been requested, and so had been considered during the assessment of that application.”

None of the 66 organisations had been made aware that their funding was under review, a decision ACE believes is justified on the basis that “we were absolutely confident that no funding decisions had been affected and thus there was no reason to contact the organisations. Had any decisions needed to be reassessed, we of course would have done so.” Following media interest today, it has revised its view and will be “contacting all the organisations affected to reassure them that we did not lack information that would have affected our final funding decisions.”

ACE has said that measures are now being put in place to ensure the problem does not arise in future.