Simply 1% of the estimated £1.1bn misplaced from the federal government’s Covid enterprise assist programme in England because of fraud and error has been recovered to this point, the general public spending watchdog has stated in a report urging ministers to study classes from the scheme.

The “overwhelming majority” of fraud and error occurred through the preliminary incarnation of the grant scheme launched in March 2020, which didn’t require prepayment checks, the Nationwide Audit Workplace (NAO) stated in its report on the rushed-through efforts.

The full of £1.1bn misplaced in grants amounted to only underneath 5% of the full for the scheme, in accordance with enterprise division statistics. The most recent figures of retrieved cash, collated by the newly renamed Division for Enterprise and Commerce (DBT) and cited by the NAO, confirmed that solely £11.4m of that has been recovered – 1% of the quantity misplaced.

The report units out the sheer pace at which the eight separate grant schemes for companies, administered by native authorities, had been developed and launched, noting that the enterprise division was solely requested by the Treasury in late February to look at how such a system would possibly work.

The primary model started from 11 March, with a second on 17 March. As early as 19 April, the report says, native authorities had made 484,000 funds totalling £6bn, greater than 50% of the full handed out in what was the most important such assist programme past the furlough scheme.

Issues weren’t helped by an absence of any shared contingency plan between native and nationwide authorities on tips on how to assist companies within the occasion of an emergency, the NAO stated, with councils usually solely listening to about new schemes after they had been introduced publicly, at which level they had been already coping with queries from native companies.

One results of the accelerated timetable was the preliminary wave of fraud and error. Later variations of the grants not solely used prepayment checks but additionally had entry to way more correct native details about companies.

The report requires the DBT and Treasury, working with councils, to attract up formal contingency plans by the tip of this yr about comparable monetary assist if there’s a future nationwide emergency, utilizing the teachings of the Covid scheme.

Gareth Davies, the top of the NAO, stated the enterprise division and native authorities “deserve credit score for working rapidly to arrange and distribute grants to companies”, however that the complete affect of fraud and error remained unclear.

“The federal government doesn’t but know the affect of those grants – by way of sustaining jobs or how a lot assist might need been given to companies which didn’t want it. With out such an evaluation, an general judgement in regards to the worth for cash of the schemes stays open,” he stated.

“The federal government’s expertise of working at pace with native authorities to channel monetary assist through the pandemic provides essential classes ought to comparable crises happen. The brand new Division for Enterprise and Commerce can now use these classes to enhance contingency planning and to construct authorities resilience for responding to future nationwide emergencies.”