A DISGRACED former councillor who was jailed last year was back in court yesterday to face two motoring charges.

Anthony Ramsden-Geary, who was jailed for 10 months last September for obtaining credit as an undisclosed bankrupt and five breaches of the Insolvency Act, pleaded guilty with special reasons to driving without insurance.

He is also charged with failing to produce a driving licence but did not offer a plea on this matter.

Ramsden-Geary, 44, will come back to Bournemouth Magistrates’ Court on Monday, October 27, when magistrates will hear his evidence as to why there are special reasons why he was driving a Range Rover on Charminster Road, Bournemouth on January 31 this year without insurance.

Ramsden-Geary, of Manor Road, Bournemouth, told the court the insurance was paid in full last spring and he was sent to prison on September 26. He said the car was a lease car and he was not told the insurance had been stopped or given a refund on the premium.

The Bournemouth planning consultant was at the centre of controversy shortly after leaving prison when he was elected chairman of the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) branch in Bournemouth, Poole and Christchurch.

This was despite his three bankruptcies, ban on being a company director, criminal conviction and the fact he had been labelled “a liability in business” by the judge who sentenced him. Protests from FSB members prompted him to stand down from the role.