NAO qualifies lottery fund accounts

Auditor general Sir John Bourn has qualified the accounts of the body
responsible for distributing lottery funds after finding potential fraudulent
activity in some grant applications.

The Community Fund, which now operated as the Big Lottery Fund, reported that
in September last year it identified a number of grant applications that
contained irregularities – such as false names and addresses – that may have
been fraudulent.

It estimates that the total amount of grants at risk of fraud since 1999 is
now £4.5m

The National Audit Office said that the suspected frauds had not been
uncovered until now because the Fund’s systems did not include adequate checks.

Sir John said the Community Fund needed to ‘give more explicit consideration
to the risks of fraud that may exist within grant programmes intended to be easy
to access and the extent to which controls should be put in place to combat
these’.