Errors and 'incompetence' caused City of Culture collapse

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A series of costly accounting errors had a major role in the collapse of the charity that ran Coventry City of Culture, a BBC investigation has found. The mistakes by staff at Coventry City of Culture Trust, which were blamed on "incompetence" during internal meetings, left a £1m hole in its budget and triggered a financial crisis that led to its demise. The trust went into administration in 2023, months after it had borrowed £1m of public funds from the city council to plug the gap. At the time, bosses publicly said the loan was needed for "short-term" funding issues, but documents released to the BBC show behind the scenes it was admitted "human error" and a "failure of governance" had causes significant problems. BBC CWR's Breakfast Presenter Phil Upton spoke with reporter Josh Nevitt who has covered this story.