Hadleigh town council has defended decisions, which members of the public have branded 'a waste of public money'.

Councillors faced questions during the public forum at their month meeting on Sepetmebr 16 and have now received answers.

Barry Cutler questioned why councillors last year voted to give staff extra paid holiday over Christmas but then also allowed them to carry forward annual leave.

Mr Cutler asked why council staff did not used some of their own annual leave at Christmas and if it was a good use of public money.

Wendy Brame, Hadleigh town clerk, replied to Mr Cutler outside the meeting and told him: :The decision to close the office and allow the staff two extra days annual leave was decided in October 2020.

"The closure of the office over Christmas has been in place for over 20 years and the current council have continued this arrangement.

"The decision to allow staff to carry forward annual leave was agreed in February 2021, after the Government introduced new regulations concerning Covid and annual leave (The Working Time (Coronavirus) (Amendment) Regulations 2020) and the town council were following these regulations.

"These regulations, which employers are not allowed to decline, allow up to four weeks' statutory paid holiday to be carried over into workers' next two holiday leave years.

"The two decisions were completely separate and made at separate meetings."

During the same public forum, former town councillor Angela Gregg queried why recommendations made by Babergh's monitoring officer regarding councillor training following unfounded code of conduct complaints had not been discussed at a council meeting.

Mrs Gregg said: "In October 2020 after a long and expensive code of conduct investigation against councillor Knock and myself, which wasn't upheld, the monitoring office listed some recommendations for the council and council officers in the findings.

"When will these recommendations be bought to full council for consideration."

The council's response as printed in the draft minutes said: "The town council manager confirmed that the recommendations have either been done or are in the process of being done."

Mrs Gregg also asked if the council would carry out the wishes of residents who voted in an online poll regarding comments made by Cllr Carol Schleip during a staffing sub committee.

She said: "In a recent post on Hadleigh Noticeboard about having an investigation into prejudice by a councillor against an armed forces veteran approximately 30 people said yes and no one said no.

"Will an open and transparent town council revisit the decision not to have an investigation."

The council minutes gave the response as: "Frank Minns, as chair, advised that the town council had voted against this, any such investigation would have no disciplinary powers; the information had been looked at by SALC and the monitoring officer and that any investigation would be a patent waste of public money."

A third member of the public asked at the same meeting about councillors that had made comments about shooting other councillors.

Angela Wiltshire said: "Unlike Cllr Knock who was required to apologise in public and has done so twice now, these two councillors were asked only to 'consider' apologising to their colleagues for joking about quitting, pretending to have technical difficulties in order to leave a council meeting, calling the concerns of their colleagues 'bickering' and saying that they should be shot.

"Chair do you know what your two Hadleigh Together colleagues (one of whom is the party's leader) have considered and decided to do about their breaches of the code of conduct?"

One of the two people asked to 'consider' apologising', Richard Hinton, has since resigned but nothing has been heard from fellow culprit James Bayliss who has not accepted responsibility or apologised.

[L]https://hadleigh.nub.news/n/two-hadleigh-together-councillors-resign-from-hadleigh-town-council[L+Full story: Hinton is one of two Hadleigh councillors to resign this month.[.L]