OPTIONS Information Caf, the charity for young people in Devizes, has been closed while a probe is carried out into the way it spent grant money.

The charity has been under investigation by The Community Fund, formerly the National Lottery Charities Board, after it lost £20,000 of grant money when a classical fundraising concert at Le Marchant Barracks, Devizes, flopped in August.

Only 27 people turned up for the event, of which eight paid for their tickets.

Officials from The Community Fund met with representatives of Options at the charity's premises in Station Road, Devizes, earlier this month.

The Community Fund suspended the charity's grant, which is paid in instalments every three months, while the investigation is going on. It said the suspension was a neutral act.

A spokesman for The Community Fund said it hoped to make a decision next week on whether to continue paying the grant or to withdraw it.

The Options Cafe, which offers a meeting place for young people and provides them with internet access, was awarded £180,000 from the National Lottery Charities Board to be spread over two years and the funding is due to end in October 2002.

It is unclear how long Options has been closed for. The charity has no money to pay bills and as a result its telephone lines and internet access have been cut off.

Options chairman David Ellis has been unavailable for comment.

His father Yan Ellis, Options' information technology manager and temporary project manager, told the Gazette that Options was due to reopen yesterday.

Speaking at his home in Tower View, Rowde, on Sunday, Mr Ellis said Options had been closed for about a week.

He said: "We normally close for a week a year. We do it to sort out the computers, the networks and to do bookkeeping."

He said since The Community Fund suspended paying the grant, Options had no money to pay its bills.

He said the meeting with officials from The Community Fund had been positive and claimed they had been told they had done nothing illegal.

He said: "We are waiting for a decision from The Community Fund and we are confident that we will be back in operation soon.

"Until we have a decision from The Community Fund it's difficult to know whether to open Options or keep it shut.

"We have got no phone lines or internet access because we can't afford to pay the phone bills. Without any funding it makes it hard to keep it open as all the time we are accruing debts."

He said he and the other staff had been working as volunteers since the Community Fund grant had been stopped.

Options owes money to artists and suppliers involved in the classical concert at Le Marchant Barracks.

Mr Ellis said: "A lot of them involved with the concert have said they will wait to see what The Community Fund decide to do."

A spokesman for The Community Fund said: "The two grants officers involved in the investigation are looking at whether or not the money that was granted under the terms of the lottery application has been spent correctly and appropriately in terms of that application. The investigation will find out whether the project was meeting the outcomes of its aspirations."

The spokesman said monitoring of the spending of the grant had been undertaken since it had been awarded to Options and nothing irregular had occurred. He said the investigation had begun following the classical music concert in August.

After the concert flop David Ellis said he was justified in spending the grant money on organising it.

He said the concert was aimed to make money for Options so the charity could be self sustaining and this was in the bid Options made for lottery funding.

jcrooks@newswilts.co.uk