BOUNCE Back grants totalling £3m handed out to businesses by BCP Council last summer will be looked at by an oversight committee on Thursday.

The Audit and Governance Committee will consider a presentation by officers from Economic Development who have drawn up a report on how the grants were distributed and what checks were made.

It is thought they have also addressed the issue of how some grant applications were changed from reject to approve by the Town Hall when the paperwork came back from independent assessors.

One of these grants was £70,000 to a firm to submit a planning application for a water park at Hurn, previously reported by the Echo. The company was not trading at the time.

Chairman, Cllr John Beesley, told the Echo his committee would be looking at all Additional Restriction Grants (ARG) of which the Bounce Back grants was a specific stream. The money came from central government.

He said: "The presentation will set out some background context and then consider in more detail the local governance in place, within the national guidance and framework, to process the grants swiftly (as required by government and within government set dates) whilst balancing the risks of fraud or error.

"It will explain the council’s use of checking tools to confirm legitimacy of the trading and banking information supplied by the local companies requesting the grant.

"It will also explain the post payment checks the council has undertaken, and continues to undertake, including random spot checks and the requirement for interim or final monitoring reports with the collection of supporting evidence such as invoices and timesheets, to ensure the grant money is spent as agreed."

He added the material would be made public after the meeting.

Cllr Margaret Phipps who raised concerns at the time the grants were awarded and sits on the Audit and Governance Committee said: “There should certainly be a more in depth look into how some of these grants were awarded and what they were awarded for.”