The closure of Broken Rainbow, which was Britain's only national LGBT domestic abuse organisation, is to be investigated by the National Audit Office (NAO) after BuzzFeed News revealed allegations that taxpayers' money had been misspent at the Home Office-funded charity.



The announcement comes after the chair of a Commons select committee wrote to both the NAO and the Home Office “requesting that they investigate” why the department continued to fund Broken Rainbow right up until its collapse in June.

The NAO said its investigation would seek to "establish the facts around the collapse of Broken Rainbow, including the financial management of the charity, Home Office oversight and the clarity of grant agreements, and the role of the Charity Commission and other public sector bodies".

It will report its conclusions in spring 2017 – less than a year after BuzzFeed News revealed a catalogue of allegations concerning the governance and financial mismanagement of Broken Rainbow. The charity's collapse drew repeated comparisons to the now defunct Kids Company, which also received government money right up to its closure, in August 2015.

In July, following the BuzzFeed News investigation, Bernard Jenkin, chair of the Commons public administration and constitutional affairs committee (PACAC), wrote to Mark Sedwill, permanent secretary at the Home Office, and Sir Amyas Morse, comptroller and auditor general, with a series of questions about this “new Kids Company”.

That exposé, based on hundreds of internal documents leaked by a whistleblower, revealed endemic profligacy, with the charity’s own treasurer warning trustees that “restricted funds” had been “misspent” in ways that could comprise “illegal activity”. Yet the Home Office carried on providing six-figure sums annually over several years.