BOLTON Council’s chief executive has moved to assure the public she and other officers did not lie or mislead councillors over the awarding of the Asons grant decision.

Margaret Asquith faced allegations at last week’s meeting that the £300,000 given to Asons was ‘ineligible’ because it did not meet rules agreed by the council about where town centre businesses should be based in order to receive grants as well as other criteria including how much could be offered.

During the meeting, Liberal Democrat leader Cllr Roger Hayes and UKIP chairman Cllr Paul Richardson referred to a council report signed off at a cabinet meeting in October 2013.

The report included a map entitled ‘proposed business support boundaries’ and councillors pointed out that the Newspaper House building — of which Asons now occupies — fell outside the designated boundary.

It also included certain stipulations about ‘eligible and ineligible’ expenditure and stated that grants should not be handed over for ‘works already underway or completed.’

Cllr Hayes pointed out that the £300,000 grant was awarded sometime after work to refurbish Asons’ new home was completed.

However, Ms Asquith has now issued a statement to all members of the scrutiny committee in which she asserts that the councillors are mistaken.

She said that the criteria for the Asons grant was not in fact captured in the report mentioned but instead from a report earlier that year.

She said: “I am concerned that elected members and members of the public now think that the grant awarded to Asons sits outside of our agreed criteria and that the chief executive and officers have lied or misled members about the grant criteria and the policy we followed.

“The criteria for the Asons grant is captured in the Bolton Town Centre Strategy which was agreed by Cabinet on the June 17 2013.”

She points out that the paper sets out the councils different aspirations for the town centre including the ‘Strengthening the office market in the town centre.’

The report also refers to a £1.5 million fund set aside by the council for this ‘stronger town centre office market.’

She said: “This is the policy and criteria officers followed to award the grant to Asons.”

She added that the report being referred to by the opposition councillors centred on a ‘completely separate fund’ which had criteria for smaller grants to attract specific businesses to the town centre.

During last week’s heated meeting Ms Asquith did accept that the controversial decision to grant the law firm the cash should ‘probably not’ have been made under its emergency powers procedure.

She said: “With a lot of hindsight this probably would have been better if officers had taken this to the next executive member meeting rather than emergency powers.”