QUESTIONS have again been raised about public funding for Charter NI after police were forced to escort a couple to safety after being intimidated from their home by a UDA mob.

Kenny 'Muscles' McCall, a former associate of alleged UDA commander and Charter NI chief executive Dee Stitt, fled his north Down home under police guard on Tuesday night.

Several car loads of men showed up outside the address in Bangor amid warnings he would be shot dead if he didn't leave the seaside town.

Police were called and escorted McCall and his partner from their home.

A member of the North Down Defenders loyalist band, which was described by Stitt in a newspaper interview as "our homeland security", McCall had been ordered to leave Bangor last week by the UDA but had refused.

Tensions between McCall and Stitt have increased in recent weeks with the alleged UDA boss accusing his once close friend of leaking information to the media.

Despite political pressure Stitt has refused to leave his £35,000-a-year job at Charter NI, which received £1.7m in funding from the Social Investment Fund (SIF) last year.

Assistant Chief Constable Stephen Martin confirmed in December that "there are connections within (Charter NI) to the UDA", leading to calls for public funding to be suspended.

Alliance Policing Board member and North Down MLA Stephen Farry said he is deeply concerned about ongoing UDA activity in north Down and elsewhere.

"Already we have both an ineffectual Executive Action Plan on paramilitary activity and some dubious decisions around the dispersal of public money and a failure on the part of the Executive to acknowledge public concerns in this regard.

“I will be raising this incident and the wider matter at the next meeting of the Policing Board.”

The PSNI confirmed they "received a report of intimidation in the Balmoral Avenue area of Bangor" on Tuesday evening and appealed for information.

Inspector Jonathan Francey said: "Just before 11pm, police received a report of shouting by men in two vehicles who had driven past a house. Police attended and a number of men left the area in cars. Police escorted a man and woman from the house to another address that they were going to stay at that night.

"The cars and men were later searched in the Bangor and Holywood areas but nothing untoward was found.

"A 49-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of disorderly behaviour but was later de-arrested pending a report to the PPS."