The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Beis) said that because it was tasked with prioritising “getting money out of the door the majority of payments made in error are unlikely to be recovered”.
The department, which organised the handouts to businesses that said they were struggling during the pandemic, acknowledged in its annual report that a total of £985m was likely to be lost to “fraud and error”.
The expected losses amount to 8.4% of all grants distributed via the small business grants fund (SBGF), the retail, hospitality and leisure business grants fund (RHLGF), and the local authority discretionary grants fund (LADGF). In total £11.7bn was handed out in 2020-21.
Read more at The Guardian
