The Department does not know whether grants distributed by local authorities on its behalf have benefited businesses, including those most in need of that funding. Although the Department set the eligibility criteria for grant schemes administered by local authorities, it delegated most grant decisions to them. The Department told us that pre-payment checks did not apply to all these schemes, and that ministers prioritised delivery of grants over faster post-payment assurance sampling work. However, with only 476 grants tested, the Department does not know where the vast majority of this £21.8 billion grant funding has gone, nor the eligibility of those in receipt of it. In the absence of more granular information, the assessment it has done is already indicative of ineligible businesses receiving grant funding, eligible businesses receiving a value of grant funding they were ineligible for, or most likely a combination of both. Fraud and error in these grant payments reduces the effectiveness of these schemes to achieve their objective of providing funds to support those businesses most in need. Recommendation: The Department should, alongside its Treasury Minute response, explain to the Committee how it is going to obtain greater assurance over the regularity and value for money of grant payments made on its behalf.