A COUNCILLOR has accused a town hall boss of trying to gag him after he queried the way taxpayers’ money was being spent.

Solicitors acting for Lymington’s town clerk, Caroline Godfrey, contacted Cllr Jack Davies after he went online and posted an article demanding to know why she was being paid around £40,000 a year.

He was told to delete the “confidential” information - despite Mrs Godfrey’s pay band being publicly available on the town council’s own website.

Cllr Davies was accused of acting improperly, compromising the impartiality of council staff and asking a question that was “intimidating, insulting and humiliating”.

The 21-year-old student - the only Liberal Democrat on the Tory-run council - was ordered to send a letter of apology to Mrs Godfrey.

Instead he has written to the town mayor, Cllr Barry Dunning, insisting that she should issue an apology for trying to “bully him into silence”.

He denied revealing confidential information and claimed he was being attacked because he was questioning how taxpayers’ money was being spent in Lymington and Pennington.

The controversy centres on comments Cllr Davies made on his website on December 16 - three months after he was elected.

He raised a series of questions about the council’s then draft budget for 2017-2018, which was approved earlier this month.

The budget includes a 3.5% council tax hike caused partly by a £17,000 rise in staff costs.

Cllr Davies demanded to know why the town clerk was being paid £40,000 a year - an estimate he based on her published pay band of £37,483-£45,129.

He also cited some of the other proposals, including cutting the budget for children’s playgrounds and spending an extra £15,000 on the seawater baths.

Cllr Davies was shocked to receive a letter from solicitors Moore Blatch, who accused him of breaching the councillors’ code of conduct. It also claimed that Mrs Godfrey “puts in long hours on a voluntary basis without pay or remuneration”.

Cllr Davies’s website still includes a reference to Mrs Godfrey’s pay band but also offers an apology to her and her colleagues “for any distress caused”.

It adds: “I have no quarrel with staff at the town hall. I do have (a) quarrel with being sent a solicitor’s letter designed to shut me up. I will not be bullied into silence.”

Mrs Godfrey declined to comment.