One of England’s largest college groups is locked in an £8 million clawback dispute with the Education and Skills Funding Agency.
NCG has instructed its lawyers to challenge the agency’s attempt to reclaim funding for historic delivery across the group between 2018/19 and 2020/21.
FE Week understands the claim relates to the application of funding rules in 16 to 19 and adult education budget funding streams, although it is unclear which rules were allegedly broken.
NCG, which has been chaired by former ESFA chief executive Peter Lauener since 2018, coughed up an undisclosed amount of funding to the agency in 2019 when it closed its two training providers, Rathbone and Intraining, after an audit found “significant data anomalies” in apprenticeship funding claims.
