Recommendation 10

The Department reduced the funding allocation to TNLCF from £310 million to £200 million around one week before it was due to start distributing funding.33 When asked why this was the case, the Department told us that it was due to the fact that Ministers wanted more flexibility in how funding was distributed and were interested in whether more could be done to leverage private donations as part of the funding distribution.34 It clarified that the decision was “absolutely not” because of a lack of trust in TNLCF.35 The funding that was removed from TNLCF was instead later allocated to the new Community Match 25 Q 51 26 C&AG’s Report, para 1.8 27 C&AG’s Report, para 3.8 and figure 9 28 Q56 29 Qq 56–58 30 C&AG’s Report, paras 10, 1.16 31 Q 75 32 Q 77 33 C&AG’s Report, para 14 34 Qq 66–68, 71–72 35 Q 67 12 COVID-19: Government Support for Charities Challenge scheme, the Voluntary and Community Sector Emergencies Partnership, the Youth COVID-19 Support Fund and the Loneliness Fund.36 The Department highlighted that by redirecting money to the Community Match Challenge scheme it was able to leverage additional funding because of its match funding arrangement. TNLFC said the decision did not impact how it went about advertising the available funding or the ability of the funding to support small and medium-sized charities.37 Due diligence on funding awards