There are now numerous Covid19-driven grant schemes in
existence. These are intended to provide financial support to
organisations operating in the different businesses sectors. This
is obviously good news.
Increasingly, though, clients are experiencing difficulties both
in terms of (a) understanding how to complete the grant
applications and (b) challenging or successfully complaining about
the grant decisions being made by the public bodies that are
administering the schemes.
The fact that the new grant scheme documentation is sometimes
less than entirely clear is perhaps unsurprising given the speed
with which the schemes were devised and the inevitable rush to put
them on the website. A Government grant scheme would normally take
many months of detailed policy analysis, consultation, planning,
modelling, detailed, careful drafting of the scheme documentation
and perhaps a phased implementation. There has been no such luxury
for government departments this
