LEDBURY Town Councillor Ewen Sinclair has been found to have breached the council's code of conduct.

He has been asked to make a private, written apology to the town clerk for his conduct towards her in relation to the renovation of the war memorial.

At a meeting of Ledbury Town Council on July 13, 2023, members resolved that a complaint should be submitted to the monitoring officer at Herefordshire Council in respect of the behaviour and actions of Cllr Sinclair.

Following several months of investigation the monitoring officer’s findings have been made public.

The recommendations include Cllr Sinclair should make a private, written apology to the town clerk and apologise to the council for his conduct.

In particular this was in not taking steps to ensure members understood the full context of his seeking authority to refer the matter to the police from March to June 2023.

Cllr Sinclair has been found to have breached the Code of Conduct on seven points.

He subsequently made apologies but these were not considered by the clerk and complainants to adequately address the breaches and the monitoring officer considered their representations.

The decision was no further public interest would be served by referring the matter to the Standards Panel. Accordingly, this decision notice would be published.

Members of Ledbury Town Council considered the findings of the Monitoring Officer at an extraordinary meeting and resolved to accept the recommendations within the report.

Cllr Sinclair will now be given an opportunity to provide apologies as per the Monitoring Officers findings, following which the council will confirm whether it is satisfied that the apologies are adequate.

Cllr Sinclair said: “The levels of frustration and stress were at times extremely high and obviously led to behaviour that the Monitoring Officer deemed inappropriate, albeit in my eyes, justified. I therefore accepted the judgements of the monitoring officer and gave an apology to the clerk on January 20 and full council on January 25.

“Since then, LTC at an extraordinary meeting of full council have resolved to strike my apology from the public record and I believe are going to be requesting that I ‘have another go’. I await notification of this in due course because I have had no correspondence from the Mayor.”

Ledbury mayor Helen L'Anson said: “I acknowledge that no communication has been forthcoming to Councillor Sinclair as yet however, this is in the process of being dealt with.”