'We were too cautious': Severe delays for Northampton's 'lifeline' business grants led by council's 'fear of getting it wrong'

The borough council's leader says he is "genuinely sorry" hundreds of Northampton's businesses had to wait for a 'lifeline' grant to keep them afloat during the lockdown - but has defended why his council was so cautious to hand out the funds.

It has been a month since the Government rolled out the Covid-19 grant scheme to help small businesses pay their bills during the lockdown.

But delays at the council meant hundreds of businesses in Northampton faced an excruciating wait for the vital money.

Now, the council's leader Jonathan Nunn says his teams were "too cautious" at the start for fear of making mistakes.

"We were scared, really," Mr Nunn told the Chron. "It was a brand new scheme and our approach was to be very cautious.

"We have made promises for the last three years we would be as careful with money as we can.

"We were unable to get a guarantee from the Government that they would cover us for any mistakes when allocating money.

"If we mistakenly gave out £25,000 on an application, we would have to correct it with £25,000 of taxpayers' money - that could be an entire street's worth of council tax. We didn't want to pay unless we were sure it was right.

"But then we were faced with a pile up in applications, and we knew it wasn't right."

When the applications rolled out on April, businesses were told they would receive their money in 10 working days.

But two weeks later on April 18, the Chron revealed the council had only completed some 400 applications out of 1,700 received.

This paper spoke to business people who had been without income for over a month and were anxiously waiting on the vital money in the face of bankruptcy.

Then, between April 20 and April 29, the number of applications processed at the council leapt from 486 to 1,559 out of 2,729 received, worth a total of £19.96m.

Mr Nunn said: "The pain of this is known how desperate some people are to get this money, and I'm genuinely sorry to them.

"But to me, it's one thing waiting for your money but it's a lot worse to get your money, square off your bills only for the council to then ask for it back because of a mistake.

"But I will absolutely say that we were too cautious at the start."

Additionally, the council says it had difficulty verifying that businesses who applied were who they said they were, and in many cases tried to research supporting evidence.

"We've got the hang of it now," said My Nunn. "We've been working closely with the Federation of Small Businesses for evidence. I wish we had done that from the start.

"I promise we did our best with it and worked all hours."

The latest figures say councils in England have on average paid out to 64 per cent of applicants.

Kettering Borough Council has proved one of the best in the country for paying the grants, and to date has 92 per cent of applications, or 1,277 out of 1,387.