A FORMER councillor who found himself locked out of a public Poole Council meeting has blasted it as a "quite disgraceful".

Brian Clements, who represented Newtown and spent 30 years on Borough of Poole, went to the Civic Centre on Tuesday night to sit in the public gallery and hear the debate.

"I got there at 7.02pm, I went to the door and it was closed," he said. He banged on the window of the members' entrance where there is usually a security man on duty to sign visitors in, but got no response.

Mr Clements, who was leader of the Liberal Democrat group and served as council leader for 12 years, then went to the main entrance and communicated with a cleaner through the glass who advised him to "phone someone". As the emergency out-of-hours number was on the door he called that and was told there was no-one on security duty that evening to open the door.

He eventually got in around 7.15pm when a member of staff used the members entrance to leave the building and discovered he was not the only person among the 10 residents present to have experienced difficulty getting in. A short time later a friend phoned him with the same problem and he went down and opened the door.

"It's quite disgraceful we weren't allowed in," he said. "I think it's a legal requirement the public are allowed to attend a council meeting. This is the major meeting of the whole council cycle."

This was the first council meeting Mr Clements had attended since losing his seat in May and he added: "I expect to attend rarely when there are items I think are of special significance such as the wild and un-thought through plans to merge councils. Last night (Tuesday) didn't encourage me to want to attend at all."

Pauline Gill, democratic services manager, said: “We would like to apologise to any member of the public who was delayed in accessing the Civic Centre for the meeting of council on Tuesday evening.

"Regrettably our normal procedures for ensuring public access to the Civic Centre via the Members’ Entrance were not in place as usual on this occasion. We are reviewing our arrangements to ensure this does not happen again.”