A big twist in the Sacha Lord story: Arts Council and GMCA now investigating

Dear Millers — we hear there is some sort of election news going on, but you won’t read about that in this edition because there have been two big developments in the Sacha Lord story in the past few hours.

The first is that the Arts Council has changed its position on this story and has begun an investigation into the claims we’ve reported about Lord’s company Primary Events. A spokesperson told us this afternoon that the new probe was “in light of new information that has been directly brought to our attention this week”. It’s a major step forward.

The second development is that the Greater Manchester Combined Authority has quickly followed suit. After a week of sticking tightly to a very limited statement about Lord and repeatedly refusing to answer our questions, Andy Burnham’s GMCA contacted us just before 6pm. A spokesperson says the GMCA now welcomes the Arts Council’s decision and has launched its “own factfinding exercise based on new information.”

We made the decision not to comply with the deadline set by Lord’s lawyers to take down our stories and social posts about him by 4pm yesterday at the threat of being sued. After spending all of Monday and Tuesday combing through hundreds of tips and ideas sent in by so many of you, it was clear that our story had become stronger rather than weaker. Not complying was a risk, but I don’t believe in backing down in the face of legal threats when our reporting is solid, and in this case, it clearly is.

We promised we would unpublish the story and apologise if information came to light that disproved our reporting that Lord’s company Primary Events deceived the Arts Council in its application for grant funding during the pandemic, but that didn’t happen. Instead we’ve gathered information that raises more serious questions for Lord, and we are now awaiting his response to those allegations before publishing another story tomorrow.

It’s important to point out that Lord “vehemently” denies the allegations against him. He told The Times yesterday that he had appointed a specialist defamation KC to represent him against The Mill and a spokesperson told other outlets that Lord was “disappointed” that we had not upheld our “values and journalistic standards”.

As we noted in our edition on Monday, one thing that seemed increasingly odd about this story was the gap between the seriousness of what we were reporting and what the two main public bodies involved — Arts Council England and the GMCA — were saying in response. Up until now, the Arts Council has maintained that it does not need to look again at the claims against Primary Events, telling us earlier this week that the probe it conducted in 2022 “provided assurance that the grant funding was used appropriately.”

Last night, we sent the Arts Council some of the new information we had gathered as part of our community fact-check, including significant quotes from former staff members at Primary Events and evidence from internal documents sent to us by readers. We also asked them to focus on the question of whether they now feel they were misled by the funding application, because their past answers had tended to focus on whether Arts Council processes were followed at the time.

Just after 2pm today, a spokesperson for Arts Council England emailed us with the organisation’s new position.

We’ve learned Arts Council England cannot investigate the contents of news reports, so their probe into Lord will only be based on evidence that is sent to them directly in the coming days and weeks. We understand that officials from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) only learned about our story in recent days and have been in discussions with the Arts Council — an arm’s length body from the DCMS — about the allegations.

Not long after the Arts Council’s stance shifted, so did that of the GMCA. Ever since we broke this story last Thursday, the GMCA has maintained that it is a matter for the Arts Council. The line being given to journalists getting in touch from both local and national outlets has been that “Any questions related to the content of the application should be directed to the applicants and any on the awarding process to Arts Council England.”

But just before we sent this newsletter, the GMCA told us it is now investigating the allegations against Lord, who has served as Burnham’s nighttime economy advisor since June 2018. A spokesperson told us:

We’ll have more for you tomorrow. A big thank you to everyone who has sent in tips, joined as members and supported us this week, including the member who sent in chocolate to the office. This update is free to read and share, but if you’re not a member yet, please do join up now so we can keep on doing this kind of work.