Grant making risk checks

As we are responsible for public money, we have a duty to assess the level of risk associated with any grant application or project that we fund. We therefore have a range of checks to help us continually assess risk.

Identity checks

The people named as contacts on the application form or any other documentation should be fully aware of the application and the project. To help us reduce the possibility of fraud we may use the personal information of any named contacts (e.g. names, home addresses and dates of birth) to carry out some basic identity checks. As such, it is important that all such information on your application form is accurate and complete. If your named contacts change during the life of a grant, it is your responsibility to inform us of these changes as soon as they happen. We may conduct the same checks on these people.

We can only give your organisation an award or make grant payments if we can verify the identity of your named contacts and there are no identified issues; and we are satisfied that it would be safe to entrust public funds to your organisation.

As well as at application stage, our identity checks can take place at any point while you have a grant. If these checks raise concerns regarding the identity of your named contacts or alert us to matters that might make it risky for us to entrust public funds to your organisation, we may request the repayment of our money and your grant could be withdrawn, under the terms and conditions of the grant.

History with us and public information

If you or your organisation applies to us, we will consider how any applications or grants with us from your organisation have been managed in the past. We will also consider the people involved in your organisation, so it is important that you know the people you are working with and carry out your own due diligence. We may identify, or be made aware of, concerns about an individual involved with your organisation. These concerns may be identified by the history with your organisation, the individual’s involvement with other organisations of concern, through information about them in the public domain (e.g. your own website, your social media pages or other internet searches), or made available to us by third parties (e.g. regulators, crime prevention agencies or public authorities). If these concerns alert us to matters that might make it risky for us to entrust public funds to your organisation, we may request the repayment of our money and your grant could be withdrawn, under the terms and conditions of the grant.

Owing to the restrictions under data protection legislation, we may not be able to provide you with any information on this area or attempt to resolve the concerns that we have. We are not subject to the Freedom of Information Act.

Fraud

If we identify a fraud risk during our assessment of your application (e.g. if you provide false or inaccurate information), we may reject your application. If we become aware of any fraud risk while you are managing our grant, we will write to you to request the repayment of our money and to withdraw any future payments, under the terms and conditions of the grant. In both instances we may also inform crime prevention agencies.

Release of information

We will not release any further specific information on our risk analysis processes or the results of our checks.

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