Recommendation 22

HM Treasury told us Ministers’ goals for the business grant schemes were to ensure sure that businesses could survive the pandemic and people stayed in employment for longer.49 We heard how civil servants in HM Treasury and BEIS (now DBT) made significant efforts to support these goals in difficult circumstances, particularly at the start of the pandemic.50 Officials in local authorities worked very hard in similar circumstances to make millions of payments totalling £22.6 billion. Central government provided local authorities with a further £210 million for the costs of administering the grant schemes, and incurred the costs of its side of the assurance work and a contract to support debt recovery.51