Home > Publications > Selected cases — Parliamentary > Selected Cases and Summaries of Completed Investigations - November 1997 - April 1998 > C.852/97
Summary of Selected Cases
ARTS COUNCIL FOR ENGLAND
Mishandling of an application for a grant
Matters considered:
Mrs X complained that the Arts Council of England (ACE) had been wrong to reject her group's application for funding on the basis that a reference provided by her local authority had been signed by someone other than the referee she had nominated. She complained also that ACE had not followed their complaint's procedure when dealing with her case.
Summary of case
Mrs X, as secretary to the group applying for a grant, submitted an application to ACE on 28 January 1997 for funding of £5,000 from the Arts for Everyone Express (A4EE) scheme. She gave the name of a leisure services officer at her local authority as one of her referees. ACE contacted him and his senior officer signed the reference and returned it to ACE. On 9 April ACE told Mrs X that her group's application had been rejected because the reference they had received from her local authority had not been from the nominated referee. In addition she would not be able to reapply on behalf of the group. Despite correspondence from Mrs X and the Member, ACE refused to accept her group's application and told her on 24 June that they were not prepared to consider any more correspondence on the matter. After Mrs X's complaint had been referred to the Commissioner ACE decided to permit an appeal. On 15 October the appeals panel decided to uphold ACE's decision.
Findings
I considered ACE's rejection of the application from Mrs X's group on the grounds that her nominated referee from the local authority had not signed the reference to be unnecessarily bureaucratic and officious. Such a requirement had not been published and it had been clear that the local authority strongly supported the application. I asked the Acting Secretary-General, therefore, to reconsider this application and any others rejected on similar grounds. I also criticised ACE for failing to follow procedures for dealing with complaints and answering correspondence.
Remedy
The Acting Secretary-General accepted the criticism of the failings I had identified and agreed to offer an award to Mrs X's group if the terms of their application had not changed and they still met the A4EE criteria. He agreed also to reconsider other applications that had been rejected on similar grounds and in similar circumstances.
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