Withdrawing a grant

Our aim is for all our grants to achieve the intended outcomes. Where this is not possible, and we believe that the terms and conditions of a grant have been breached, we follow a procedure that involves suspending grant payments.

If we think that the breach, or a series of smaller breaches, is serious enough and cannot be remedied, we may take one or both of the following actions:

• withdraw any grant funding that you’ve not yet received from us
• recover all or some of the grant that you’ve already received from us.

This guide explains the procedure we follow when considering withdrawing a grant, if this is without the grant holder’s agreement.

We'll work with you to deal with any challenges you have in delivering your plans. We’ll only consider withdrawing a grant when we believe that there have been problems with the grant that cannot be remedied. Reasons for considering withdrawing the grant might include, but are not limited to, the following situations:

• funding has been spent on items or services that do not relate to the original application for funding and/or have not been approved by the Fund
• a grant holder has not returned information we’ve requested about the grant, such as project updates or monitoring information
• a grant holder provides with false or misleading information
• if anyone involved in the project or organisation is under investigation by us, a regulatory body or the police
• a grant holder fails to comply with the terms and conditions set out in the grant agreement or any additional terms and conditions it signed up to
• a project has not progressed within a reasonable time or might not be completed
• a project has changed and no longer meets the requirements for the funding programme under which it was awarded.

The initial circumstances may vary depending on your project and the specific breaches in the terms and conditions of grant.

Your funding officer may have contacted the project or organisation’s main contact and/or other members to try to resolve the issue on several occasions. We might have temporarily suspended your grant payments.

If we feel that the identified issues have not been resolved satisfactorily, we’ll recommend withdrawing your grant.

We’d take the following steps:

1. Your funding officer will inform you that your grant payments have been stopped. If you spend any more money on your project from this date, it’ll be at your own risk because we might take action to recover some or all of the funding you’ve spent and stop any future payments.

2. We’ll write a ‘Recommendation to Withdraw Report’ explaining which terms and conditions we believe you’ve breached and why we believe that the grant should be withdrawn.

3. The head of funding responsible for the relevant funding programme will review the information presented in the ‘Recommendation to Withdraw Report’ and decide either to reinstate the grant or recommend that the grant be withdrawn.

We cannot tell you how long the review will take, as it depends on the circumstances of the breach. If we decide to reinstate your grant at this stage, we’ll tell you about any additional monitoring requirements we have and when your next grant payment will be made.

4. If we decide to proceed with the recommendation to withdraw your grant, we’ll send you:

• a covering letter explaining that we’re proposing to withdraw your grant. The letter will include the date for a hearing in which the chair, committee or decision maker that awarded your grant will decide whether to reinstate or withdraw your grant.
• a ‘Recommendation to Withdraw Report’ detailing the terms and conditions that we believe were breached, including evidence about each breach and the ways we’ve tried to remedy them with you.

• a copy of the terms and conditions of your grant that we make reference to in the letter.

If we’ve sent you the ‘Recommendation to Withdraw Report’, you’ll have an opportunity to submit further information or respond to the comments raised in the report. The deadline for you to respond will be stated in the letter.

5. The ‘Recommendation to Withdraw Report’ will be sent to the chair, committee or decision maker that awarded your grant with any information that you’ve submitted.

6. The chair, committee or decision maker that awarded your grant will meet on the date of the hearing and decide on one of the following options:

• defer the final decision and request additional monitoring information or other action from you
• reinstate the grant with or without additional conditions
• withdraw any unpaid grant, and recommend whether funds paid to date should be recovered in part or in full.

7. The chair, committee or decision maker’s decision will be based solely on the evidence of the breaches of terms and conditions of grant as evidenced in the ‘Recommendation to Withdraw Report’ and related annexes.

8. Once the chair, committee or decision maker has confirmed their decision, we’ll notify you of the outcome by sending you a ‘Decision Statement’ with a covering letter that explains what will happen next.

You may request a review of the decision if you can demonstrate that either:

• the facts on which the decision was based contained a material and demonstrable error, or
• the National Lottery Community Fund’s process on which the decision was based was not followed correctly.

You must send this request to our legal department to the following address within 30 calendar days of the date of the ‘Decision Statement’ letter:

Head of Legal Services
Legal Department
The National Lottery Community Fund
Society Building
Regents Wharf
8 All Saints Street
London
N1 9RL

Or email: legal@tnlcommunityfund.org.uk

Make sure you include your project ID number in any communication with us.

If you have comments or further questions on the process explained in this document, contact your funding officer. Or you can contact:

For England funding programmes

Enquiries line: 0345 4 10 20 30

Email: general.enquiries@tnlcommunityfund.org.uk

For those with a hearing or speech impairment:
Text relay 18001 plus 0345 4 10 20 30
BSL users can contact us using SignVideo

For Scotland funding programmes

Enquiries line: 0300 123 7110

Email: advicescotland@tnlcommunityfund.org.uk

For those with a hearing or speech impairment:
Text relay 18001 plus 0300 123 7110
BSL users can contact us using contactSCOTLAND-BSL

For Wales funding programmes

Enquiries line: 0300 123 0735

Email: wales@tnlcommunityfund.org.uk

For those with a hearing or speech impairment:
Text relay 18001 plus 0300 123 0735
BSL users can contact us using SignVideo

For Northern Ireland funding programmes

Enquiries line: 028 9055 1455

Email: enquiries.ni@tnlcommunityfund.org.uk

For those with a hearing or speech impairment:

Text relay 18001 plus 028 9055 1431
BSL users can contact us using SignVideo

For UK-wide projects

Enquiries line: 0345 4 10 20 30

Email: UKPortfolioTeam@tnlcommunityfund.org.uk

For those with a hearing or speech impairment:

Text relay 18001 plus 0345 4 10 20 30
BSL users can contact us using SignVideo