We asked the Department about its long-term plans for the loan book, as our experience has been that Government has generally had issues at times managing loan books.24 The Accounting Officer confirmed her accountability for the fund’s loans but said it was too early to say what the plans were for long-term management and could not give any commitments about whether or not the Government would sell on the loan book.25 We asked the Department whether, given the scale of COVID-19 loans across Government, it had learned lessons from other Departments about managing its loan book. It told us it regarded the scale of COVID loans in the fund as “a mere minnow” but acknowledged it was a lot of money for the sector, and said that as ACE had close and long- term relationships with many of the organisations that had received loans it considered this was unusual compared to other loan schemes rolled out across Government. Nonetheless it said it wanted to follow excellent practice and was very keen to learn from good practice in other Departments about how they were handling loans.26 Acting quickly to provide funding and applicants’ experiences