Council secures repayment of controversial £300,000 grant to law firm

Bolton Council has secured the repayment of a controversial £300,000 grant made to Asons Solicitors using emergency powers, after it emerged that the law firm had sold its business and ceased trading.

The business is understood to have become part of Coops Law, a trading name for Banks Solicitors Ltd. It has been reported in the local press that all staff have transferred across.

A spokeswoman for Bolton said: “As soon as we were aware of Asons ceasing trading, we instructed solicitors to recover the grant. They confirmed the cessation of trading definitely breached the grant conditions and we instructed them on Friday 24 March 2017 to start legal proceedings to recover the grant immediately. We served notice to terminate the grant in accordance with our grant agreement on Monday, 27 March 2017.

“Following our instructions to commence legal proceedings, we were contacted by a representative for the former director and shareholder of Asons with an offer to repay the grant. The full amount of the grant was repaid to the council on Tuesday 28 March 2017.

“We are satisfied that the grant has been repaid in full without having to go through the grant recovery process.”

The £300,000 grant was given to the claimant personal injury firm to help with the refurbishment of an office in the town centre.

In November 2016 the leader of Bolton, Cllr Cliff Morris, ordered an independent audit amid the row over the grant and the use of emergency powers.

In January this year the council’s chief executive, Margaret Asquith, said at a corporate and external issues scrutiny meeting that it was not unusual for local authorities to give grants to support businesses, but she accepted that emergency powers should “probably” not have been used to approve one in this case.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority has meanwhile confirmed that it has intervened into the practice of Kamran Akram, former chief executive at Asons Solicitors.

The watchdog said the grounds of intervention were breaches of the SRA Principles and breaches of the SRA Code of Conduct.

The intervention came after the SRA’s Adjudication Panel decided it was satisfied that it was necessary to intervene to protect the interests of clients and former clients of the firm.