FOR Margaret Asquith to claim some kind of credit for the repayment of the £300,000 grant is astounding.

I have seen the agreement and although it allows for the council to recover the grant award if Asons ceases trading, the reality is that the council would have faced an uphill struggle of recovering money from a business that was no longer trading. As the money was repaid voluntarily from the personal account of one of the firm's founders then the council cannot claim any credit for recovering our money which should never have been given to this firm in the manner it was.

Hopefully the council was not guilty of breaking any laws but they were guilty of extreme naivety.

Lessons have to be learnt from this but only if the council admits it made some serious errors of judgement and at the moment I cannot see this.

M Kozlowski

Bolton