Unauthorised credit check?

BiscuitLily

I would be grateul for some advice. My partner and I wish to buy the lease of a pub, for which we would like an unsecured loan of £85,000 (about 50% of ingoing costs). We had a meeting with a lender (a small high street bank) which was organised through a broker. The loan application, sent to the broker and copied to the bank, was in my name only and only I had signed to authorise my credit history to be checked. It was done this way because I have a good credit history and I will continue to work separately from the pub, therefore when the bank manager did the sums I could afford all outgoings, including repayments of the £85,000 loan, independently of the pub's income.

However, my partner is the one with extensive pub /management experience but he has a poor credit history, including one outstanding credit card debt of £800 which has been defaulted on over a long period (no I'm not happy, its stupid and he's trying to clear it as we speak). Therefore he was not included in the loan application, but he was included in the business plan and he attended the meeting with bank manager, where he was asked for his name and address. Depite a very positive meeting, the loan application was declined because of HIS credit rating.

We were not aware that his credit history was to be checked otherwise we would have been open about it with the bank manager. We were advised to revise the business plan to make it clear that I would be in charge and he would be employed as the manager, but we were still declined, this time on the size (proportion) of the loan (which had not previously been a problem) and that part of our deposit is also a loan (although all repayments could be met).

So my questions are, are banks allowed to check the credit history of my partner without his permission, should I complain, and does anyone think we should approach it differently with another lender?

Thanks for your time