The resident at the centre of the Hadleigh Christmas trees row, which resulted in her being sent a threatening legal letter by the council has spoken of her emotional exhaustion.

Her reaction came after a councillor spoke publicly about the failures of town council manager Cheryl Tye and former mayor Frank Minns.

During the monthly town council meeting Hadleigh members discussed carrying out a review regarding the complaint about how the Christmas trees were put up in the High Street and unsafe they were with five falling down to one extent or other.

Mrs A's complaints led to a solicitor's letter being sent just before Christmas causing distress to the resident. Councillors wanted to look at how the process was not followed correctly and councillor Roberts has suggested a raft of remedial actions.

Councillor Huw Roberts said: "Regarding the more concerning issue of the bypassing of the council in sending the solicitor's letter, the lack of due diligence, and lack of information shared with the council, I am struggling to think of what remedial actions to suggest. If the town council manager or Cllr Minns were still in post, I would have some suggestions, but they are not.

"All I can do as an individual councillor is express my frustration at how it came to pass that a threatening solicitor's letter was sent in our name to a member of the public who was raising safety concerns, without our consent or prior knowledge."

The resident, whose identity we agreed to protect and have called Mrs A, admitted being moved by the acknowledgement.

She said: "I was surprisingly quite upset when Cllr Roberts read out his statements about Minns and Tye.

"I was mainly upset because for the first time anyone related to HTC voiced how upsetting this must be for me.

"Hearing Cllr Roberts say about the upset this caused me over Christmas and New Year made me cry.

"The acknowledgment of this was good to hear and it made me in that instance realise how much this had affected me. I left the meeting soon after on Thursday as I was emotionally exhausted and just wanted to go home.

"It's been a long three plus months with a lot of stress and upset regardless of the endless hours spent writing statements and reviewing emails etc."

Mr Minns told Nub News: "As I told all councillors at the time, I could see that Cheryl was deeply distressed by what was being said about her. There are aspects of the consultations she had with solicitors of which I was and remain unaware, but the broad thrust of their advice was that there was a prima facie case of defamation.

"I saw the proposed letter in draft and advised against sending it. I felt it would quite possibly only serve to reignite a dying fire. Which is of course exactly what happened.

"As for the process - aside from the fact that the council apparently chose to pass such a resolution without seeking to speak to me (or, I assume, Cheryl) or informing me that my conduct was to be discussed, which seems to me a pretty blatant breach of natural justice - following standing orders in summoning a meeting of full council would have meant that the head of our administration would have spent effectively another week in limbo, and that seemed to me a breach of our duty of care as an employer.

"I frequently said during my 16 months in office that HTC should be looking outwards not inwards. To devote council time to effectively censuring the conduct of two people who have no present connection to Hadleigh town council is futile and wasteful and will not be understood by the people of this town."

Nub News has not been able to contact Ms Tye for comment.

Mr Minns and Ms Tye are alleged to have acted unilaterally in instructing a solicitor to send the letter and did not consult other councillors, which appeared to be a breach of the council's Standing Orders and possibly the Local Government Act.

Cllr Roberts suggested remedial actions include:

1. We publish our complaints procedure on our website
2. We circulate it to all cllrs and staff.
3. We ask the Council Matters Committee to review the procedure and update it to comply with the latest best practice.
4. We circulate to all cllrs and staff the Local Government Ombudsman guidance on complaint handling best practice – this is a good guide on how to effectively handle complaints.
5. We ask the Council Matters Committee to review how recordings of calls to the council offices are handled – who has access under what circumstances, review GDPR compliance.

It is understood the clerk Wendy Brame has already taken some action on these.

Cllr Roberts said at the meeting last Thursday: "It ought to be made clear, having read the report from the clerk (for which, thank you), the emails, and so on, that Cllr Minns had not been given authority to approve the solicitor's letter.

"The council had passed no resolution regarding it, and had not even discussed it. Cllr Minns did not consult with council prior to the letter being sent.

"Regarding the original complaint, the council has a documented procedure for handling complaints. Cllr Minns does not appear to have followed it, nor did he refer the member of the public to it. This is not just a matter of process.

"If the procedure had been followed, it might have led to a better outcome. For example, it would have been the clerk who handled the complaint, the member of the public would have known exactly what the steps in the process were, what was required from her, and what the council should do next. And it would have led to a written report on the complaint at its meeting in December – rather than the lack of information we had at that meeting.

"Regarding the solicitor's letter, it claimed that not only had the town council manager (TCM) been defamed as an individual, but so had 'Hadleigh Town Council'.

"This was legally flawed because the general legal guidance from the National Association Local Council, is a council cannot be defamed. I refer councillors to NALC LTN 30 which says:

"Public and local authorities (including local councils) cannot be defamed and cannot therefore sue."

"Neither Cllr Minns nor the TCM appear to have taken this into account. The NALC legal guidance, as staff and councillors will know from their training, is available to all of us via the NALC website. It took me 10 minutes to find.

"So, in addition to bypassing the council and the proper process in sending the letter out, there does not appear to have been sufficient due diligence done on the content of the letter itself.

"If Cllr Minns had followed the right process and brought the decision to a council meeting, it is likely this flaw would have been spotted in draft.

"The solicitor's letter says that an injunction will follow if the member of the public does not withdraw and apologize – pre-empting what should have been another council decision. The member of the public did not apologise. Emails from Cllr Minns to her and fellow councillors gave me the impression that an injunction was now going to be sought without approval from the council.

"We can see from the emails we have now been provided with, that just two hours after the member of the public had informed Cllr Minns that she would not apologise, Cllr Minns forwarded her email to the TCM with the words 'one for the solicitors'. That was on Friday December 10th, 6.55pm.

"It was only then that Cllr Minns first informed his fellow councillors, as far as know, about the letter and the injunction proceedings. He wrote to us that the matter was now the subject of legal proceedings and that comment was therefore impossible.

"On Monday Dec 13th I wrote to Cllr Minns expresing concern about the bypassing of the council, asking that the council be involved in all future decisions on the matter, and asking for all the correspondence and evidence to be shared with the council. Cllr Minns did not respond to or acknowledge that email.

"On 4th Jan, given the lack of information from Cllr Minns, I and Cllr Knock asked Cllr Minns to call an extra meeting to discuss the matter and consider what to do. As per the council's rules, Cllr Minns had up to a week to respond. A week later, he refused our request.

"On 6th Jan Cllr Minns clarified that he did in fact expect the council to decide on the next step. But he did not provide details of the evidence for the legal action, if he had it.

"In short, it was proving to be a struggle to get the information we needed, had asked for, and were entitled to. Meanwhile, the member of the public had spent Christmas and New Year expecting an injunction to be served on her. She has told us how distressing and worrying that has been."

Council threatens resident with gagging order.