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Sacha Lord resigns as Manchester’s night time economy advisor

Sacha Lord, night time economy advisors to the Mayor of Greater Manchester, has stepped down from the role after the company he co-founded was asked to pay back £400,000 of public money it was given during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Lord, who was appointed by Mayor Andy Burnham to the role in 2018, came to prominence for setting up the Parklife festival and The Warehouse Project, the latter being a series of club nights in Manchester.

However, local investigative news source The Mill published a piece in May of last year which alleged that Lord’s Primary Event Solutions company had received £401,928 from Arts Council England’s Covid-19 support fund in 2021 due to what the article described as a “misleading application”. One particular issue was that Primary Event Solutions had previously gone by the name of Primary Security, and that the company’s focus had been on security, not on events, making certain claims it made in its funding application about events it had supposedly run incorrect.

Arts Council England, which had first investigated the grant in 2022 but found no evidence of misuse of public money, only to reopen the investigation after The Mill‘s report, announced on Wednesday (29 January) that it had requested the money back: “Following a thorough review of the application that Primary Event Solutions submitted to the Culture Recovery Fund in 2021, our decision is to withdraw the grant that was awarded and we are seeking to recover this money.”

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In response to this update, Lord, who previously threatened to sue The Mill over its reports only to withdraw, resigned from his post.

In a statement, Burnham thanked Lord for his service and said: “Sacha has accepted there were inaccuracies in a grant application, and I believe him when he says there was no intention to mislead and that he made no personal gain from the grant.”

Lord said: “With heartfelt thanks to the Mayor and his team, I have decided to continue in this direction and embrace a new chapter ahead – championing the sector on a national level with fresh focus and energy.”

“Given the company’s [Primary Event Solutions] current status in liquidation, and recognising that there are a small number of unintended oversights which have impacted the application’s clarity under the criteria, we accept that the grant status has been updated,” continued Lord’s statement. “That said, I remain concerned over inconsistencies and a lack of proportionality in the handling of this matter.”

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