A TOWN councillor has insisted that he has been wrongly excluded from meetings.

Cllr Peter Yeo has been forced from online meetings of Shaftesbury Town Council on several occasions since town council meetings switched to online. He claims the town council has used the wrong standing orders to exclude him – designed for unruly members of the public, rather than councillors.

The town council has insisted that the legislation it is using is correct and legal.

Cllr Yeo told the March online meeting of the town council that there is no legislation which can exclude him, or other councillors, from digital meetings of the council.

Both Cllr Yeo and Cllr Karen Tippins were recently found to have breached the town council’s code of conduct at meetings last year. The code of conduct hearing were held by a Dorset Council committee at the end of February, upholding the complaints.

Cllr Tippins repeated an apology at the March town council meeting to Cllr Michael Welch after calling him ‘an idiot’ at a previous meeting. She had previously made an apology to Cllr Welch in writing. Cllr Welch was not at the meeting and had sent an apology for his absence.

Cllr Peter Yeo said the complaints made against him had been “trivial and vexatious” and told the meeting he was going to pursue the way Dorset Council had carried out the investigation and subsequent hearing. He said he would be taking the matter to the Local Government Ombudsman to investigate.

Cllr Yeo and Tippins have continued to question whether the town council should invest around half a million pounds to improve facilities at the town football club.

Cllr Tippins sought to make changes to the council’s budget, adopted in January, at the March meeting, but was out-voted. Among the changes she wanted was to provide extra money for new play equipment at St James, where, according to Cllr Tippins, all of the equipment will need to be replaced. Mayor Cllr Andrew Hollingshead said the proposal for extra money could be made later in another way.

Cllr Yeo claimed at the meeting that it is wrong for town councillors not to appear on screen during online meetings. He specifically objected to the non-appearance on screen of town and unitary councillor Piers Brown, although Cllr Brown and Mayor Cllr Andrew Hollingshead says there is no requirement, in law, for councillors to show their faces on screen during meetings.