A JUDGE has overturned a tribunal’s finding that a member of a “dysfunctional”

council disrespected its clerk.

Earlier this year, driving instructor and magistrate Colin Clark, 50, was suspended for three months from West Rainton and Leamside Parish Council, in County Durham, by the First Tier Tribunal, formerly the Adjudication Panel for England.

He and fellow Liberal Democrat opposition councillor Ian Fawcett appealed to the tribunal after Durham County Council’s standards committee found they had committed some of the most serious breaches it had had to consider under the national code of conduct for councillors.

The committee found they had bullied the council’s clerk, who resigned after 28 years’ service, and had objected to the adjournment of a meeting because the wife of the Labour chairman, Jeff Morland, was seriously ill.

She later died.

The pair appealed to the First Tier Tribunal, which branded the parish council “dysfunctional” because of political infighting.

The tribunal ruled the pair did not bully the clerk, but did not treat her with respect, bringing the council into disrepute.

It also found that while their behaviour towards Councillor Morland was insensitive, they had not breached the code.

Mr Clark alone appealed to the Upper Tribunal and Judge Ward upheld it, saying the “decision of the First Tier Tribunal was not sustainable on the evidence before it”.

He said Mr Clark was a victim of “guilt by association”

because he was of the same party as Mr Fawcett and the tribunal believed they were following an agreed strategy.

Mr Clark, who now plans to return to the magistrates’ bench, said he had left the Liberal Democrats, but remained a councillor.

“I have always maintained I did nothing wrong. Hopefully, I can put this behind me and get on with my life,” he said.

He criticised the county council’s standards committee and said it treated him shabbily, denying him a fair hearing.

Revealing he had suffered health problems brought on by the stress of the case, he said this had left him suspended as a parish councillor for four months and as a magistrate for nine-and-a-half months.

“This was all brought about by people making unfounded complaints,”

he added.