THE government has no record of any agreement between BCP Council and former ministers to support specific financial arrangements related to the now scrapped beach hut sell-off.

The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities confirmed its position following the collapse of the local authority’s contentious proposal at the end of July.

BCP Council’s Conservative leadership was planning to sell thousands of beach huts to a wholly or partly owned company to plug a transformation funding gap to the tune of around £50million.

Read more: Beach hut sale debacle sparks call to give up 'glory schemes'

However, levelling up secretary Greg Clark stepped in the past fortnight to torpedo the scheme.

Mr Clark said he changed the rules around flexible use of capital receipts to close a loophole which some councils had tried to use to complete “dodgy deals which only benefit the bottom lines of consultancies and accounting firms”.

Read more: Controversial BCP Council beach hut sale SCRAPPED after government intervention

Cllr Drew Mellor said the principle of the “beach hut securitisation plan” had been agreed a year ago when Robert Jenrick was the secretary of state.

He also said positive discussions had taken place with his successor Michael Gove before the senior Conservative MP was sacked by Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

As reported, last month BCP Council chief executive told central government the local authority needed support totalling £75.9million over the next three years, with an indication that it wanted to apply for a capitalisation direction to borrow the money.