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

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

The overall of £1.1bn misplaced in grants amounted to simply underneath 5% of the entire for the scheme, in response to 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 velocity 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 entire handed out in what was the largest such help programme past the furlough scheme.

Issues weren’t helped by an absence of any shared contingency plan between native and nationwide authorities on learn how to help companies within the occasion of an emergency, the NAO mentioned, 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 related monetary help if there’s a future nationwide emergency, utilizing the teachings of the Covid scheme.

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

“The federal government doesn’t but know the impression of those grants – when it comes to sustaining jobs or how a lot help might need been given to companies which didn’t want it. With out such an evaluation, an total judgement concerning the worth for cash of the schemes stays open,” he mentioned.

“The federal government’s expertise of working at velocity with native authorities to channel monetary help in the course of the pandemic gives necessary classes ought to related 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.”