The National Lottery Community Fund has paused funding for transgender support charity Mermaids while the regulator conducts a compliance case.
The funder confirmed today that it will not pay further instalments of a £500,000 grant until the outcome of the Charity Commission’s investigation is known.
The NLCF awarded the grant in 2018, with payments to be made over five years.
Mermaids has opted not to comment on the story, which was first reported in The Times newspaper.
The NLCF, then known as the Big Lottery Fund, reviewed the decision to fund Mermaids in early 2019 after complaints and “did not find any grounds” for withholding funding.
The funder said today: “We have paused any future payments to Mermaids, pending the Charity Commission’s regulatory compliance case.
“This is an option open to us in cases such as this.”
The decision to pause funding comes after the Charity Commission opened its case last week, following reports in The Telegraph newspaper about the charity making chest binders available to children without parental consent. Binding is defined by the NHS as “reducing the appearance of soft tissue by flattening your chest”.
Mermaids accused the newspaper of pursuing “a smear campaign” against the charity.
In a separate development, Jacob Breslow, a Mermaids trustee, resigned on Monday after media reports that in 2011 he spoke at a conference organised by a group that promotes support for paedophiles. Breslow had been a trustee since July.
Belinda Bell, the chair of trustees at Mermaids, said in a statement that the charity “immediately launched an investigation” when it became aware of the reports.
Bell added: “We want to apologise for the distress and concern this news has caused. It is clear that Dr Breslow should never have been appointed to the board and as chair of the trustee board I am horrified that he was.”
She said that Mermaids had updated the Charity Commission after the reports emerged and would be commissioning independent reviews of both its trustee recruitment process and the charity’s policies and procedures.