Council prosecutes company for fraudulent Covid grant application

In April 2020, S&K Prop Ltd, submitted an application for a grant of £25,000 from the Retail, Hospitality & Leisure Grant Fund that was introduced by the Government during the Covid pandemic. The grant, which was administered locally by local authorities, was designed to provide additional support to local businesses impacted negatively by the imposed Covid restrictions.

S&K Prop Ltd applied for the grant for the George Inn, Post Office Lane, George Green, Slough. To be eligible for the grant, amongst other requirements, businesses needed to be rate payers for the business premises the application related to, and they needed to be in occupation at the premises.

Investigations carried out by the council discovered that this was not the case. A separate company, Milegate Ltd, was in fact in occupation, not S&K Prop Ltd. Milegate Ltd had at first attempted to deny they were the occupants of the premises in order to avoid liability for Business Rates and presented documents which purported to show that S&K Prop Ltd were liable. A point which was denied by the firm. 

With the start of the Covid pandemic and the launch of the Retail, Hospitality & Leisure Grant Fund both companies made applications for grants. Following the exposure of the fraudulent claim by S&K Prop Ltd a criminal investigation was launched. The fraudulent application by S&K Prop Ltd was discovered before any grant funding was distributed so no public funding was lost as a result. S&K Prop Ltd submitted a guilty plea to two charges of Fraud by False Representation and appeared at Aylesbury Crown Court for sentencing on Friday 30 August. The judge imposed a fine of £20,625 and costs of £10,750. The defendant company was granted a six month period to pay both.

John Chilver, Cabinet Member for Accessible Housing and Resources said: “The Retail, Hospitality and Leisure grants given out during the pandemic were designed to support legitimate businesses who were negatively affected by circumstances out of their control. In this case a business instead sought to try and exploit the system for their own gain, but thanks to the hard work of our investigations and legal teams, they did not get away with it.”