Councils dealing with almost 2000 cases following closure of Kids Company

Its report said civil servants had noted that other organisations “appeared to offer better value for money” than Kids Company.

“They provided us with a few monitoring information, with a couple of reports”.

The 2008 award saw Kids Company receive 20% of available grant programme funding, the remainder was shared between 42 other charities. On August 3, the Cabinet Office terminated the grant agreement and requested repayment of £2.1 million.

A report from the National Audit Office (NAO) has shed light on just how much money the now defunct charity actually got from the government, and there are a few pretty shocking statistics.

Kids Company was given government grants between 2013-15, despite being unsuccessful in official bids for funding through the government’s National Prospectus Grants programme.

March 2015: Cash flow problems were persisting and officials were concerned that the charity would continue to rely on public funding. It was at this stage that officials first raised concerns about setting a “dangerous precedent” and that “other organisations were more effective”. Briefings to ministers in 2002, 2005, 2007, 2010, 2012 and 2015. Considering that Kids Company only operated in London and Bristol, this is pretty wonderful.

Almost £50m of taxpayers’ money was given to Kids Company despite six warnings from civil servants that the funds could be wasted.

This meant that from 2013 it did not have to compete for grants, the NAO found. This contradicts Kids Company’s statements about how frequently it was independently audited.

Kids Company directed a greater proportion of its income towards paying its chief executive than Britain’s biggest charities, arguably undermining claims it provided “exceptional” value.

Do Kids Company’s sums add up?

Mandarins responsible for a few of the funding decisions will be called before the powerful Commons Public Accounts Committee on Monday.

There has always been a feeling with in the charity sector that Kids Company was getting special treatment from the government, largely down to its charismatic founder and friends in high places. Despite this, government gave it further grants – funded by the taxpayer.

To put that into perspective, in that year, Department of Education grants were given to 43 different charities.

In a report published today, the spending watchdog also said that Kids Company, which mainly supported children and families in inner city areas of London and Bristol, had received larger grants than any other charities from the Department for Education.

“I was constantly asking for the performance indicators, the data, to see if it was having the effect we were promised”. It was founded by Camila Batmanghelidjh.

“You have to ask No 10 as to why final approval went through”, he told the BBC Radio 4 today programme.

Kids Company claim 36,000 “children, young people and vulnerable adults” are helped by the charity.

“But it’s clear that in this case, there were serious problems, a serious lack of governance, on the part of the charity involved and Government seems not to have understood how to work with this organisation until it was way too late”.

“I was very sceptical at the time, and very against giving them such a large amount of money”, Mr Loughton said.

But he said he was “overruled” by Downing Street after Ms Batmanghelidjh wrote a “Dear David letter” to Number 10.

But a Department for Education spokesman said: “We do not recognise Camila’s version of events”.