PLANS to give £50,000 towards the cost of new cricket pavilion in Minehead could be stumped after questions were raised about the size of the grant.

While West Somerset Council's cabinet backed the idea of a £50,000 grant for the club, Alcombe district and town councillor Cllr Paul Grierson said he was "shocked" by the size of the proposed handout.

He said while Minehead Town Council fully supported financially helping the cricket club, members had not been made aware of the size of the grant being proposed.

"At no time was Minehead Town Council told about the sum of money," he told cabinet members on Wednesday.

"If we give £50,000 I was told that would have depleted all the funding for Minehead.

"We have requests for funding from the rugby club, we have a cycling track we want to reinstate, yet this would take all the funding out just for cricket, which is a bit unfair.

"Having decided you had £50,000 to spend I thought you could have come back to the town council.

"We were not aware it was this amount of money - this is an excessively large amount of money."

The cabinet gave its support to the proposal to hand over £50,000 of "106 planning obligation money" which was paid to the authority by developers to off-set the impact of building work in the town.

A final decision on whether to allocate the money will be taken at next Wednesday's full meeting of the district council.

The Minehead cash specifically came from money paid in connection with a development of new homes off Bircham Road, a scheme which is due to secure a total of £206,000 in 106 funding for a range of projects in the town.

However, the cash will come with a strict list of conditions attached and not all the money will be able to be used to support sporting or leisure facilities.

Ian Timms, the council's community and housing manager, said the cricket club had asked for £50,000 to enable it to apply for a £100,000 grant from the England and Wales Cricket Board before the end of August this year.

He said the district council regularly consulted with parish and town councils about their priority projects for 106 funding and said Minehead Town Council had written a letter confirming its support for the cricket club's bid for cash towards a new pavilion.

"Each planning obligations agreement has individual requirements and must be carefully matched to any project that is suggested," he said.

"Any project must meet those requirement and be relevant and related to mitigating the effects of the development that provides the funding.

"Monies have become available to support a project to build a cricket pavilion in Minehead.

"This project had previously been identified as being one that met the requirements of a number of agreements in Minehead."

The cricket club has already secured planning permission to build a new pavilion on land at the West Somerset Community College.

Cabinet members were told that giving the £50,000 grant would still leave £15,000 in the 106 funding cash pot for Minehead, with a further £156,000 due in from the Bircham Road development.

Cllr Kate Kravis, lead member for finance, said the district council had listened to the town council's views before putting the cricket club forward for the funding.

"We were concerned that the parishes were not being involved so we went to Minehead Town Council and asked them for their priorities," she said.

"The cricket club critically needs this money so it can secure £100,000 from the England and Wales Cricket Board."

Mr Timms reminded councillors that ultimately it was up to the district council how much money was spent on each individual project as it was in responsible for the 106 funding.

But Cllr Grierson was adamant the town council should be asked for its views on handing over £50,000 to the pavilion project before councillors were asked to take a final decision in a week's time.