POLITICIANS have put their differences aside to give a standing ovation to a retiring council leader, after hearing him confess to high-jinks in one of the authority’s dumper trucks when he was younger.

As Darlington Borough Council leader Councillor Bill Dixon stepped down after more than 27 years as either its leader or deputy leader, a full meeting of the authority saw members hail him for his efforts to improve the area.

After being voted in as the council’s new leader, Councillor Stephen Harker said Cllr Dixon would be a hard act to follow.

Conservative councillor Charles Johnson said after Labour member Cllr Dixon was first elected to the authority in 1979 his colleagues had “tried to work out whether Councillor Bill was Leninist, Stalinist, Marxist, but we never figured it out”.

He said: “What I do know from working together is he always put Darlington and its residents at the forefront of his council service. Bill, as a leader you have always grasped the nettle when needed to do so.”

Conservative member Councillor Alan Coultas said Cllr Dixon had “literally saved lives” by driving forward homelessness projects and highlighted the key role the council leader had played in ensuring council housing had been retained by the authority. 

In a wide-ranging speech, Cllr Dixon said during his seven years as leader one of the council’s greatest achievements had been avoiding bankruptcy in 2012.

He praised councillors for making difficult decisions, such as cutting 700 staff, to get the authority on a better financial footing. Cllr Dixon said: “If we hadn’t done what we did we would now be faced with a wholesale slaughter.”

Cllr Dixon, who will be standing down as a councillor before the next council elections in May, said: “It’s been a long shift and sometimes a gruelling shift. I have never deliberately tried to harm this town, nor would I.”

He also recalled how before becoming a councillor he had visited Red Hall with his friends. Cllr Dixon said: “I can say this now because I am not going to be leader much longer. We nicked a council dumper. “

He said they drove it “off the site”, with one friend steering it and others working the gear lever and accelerator as he operated the brakes. He said: “The site foreman turned up and started chasing us. It looked like something out of the Keystone Cops. He would chase us forwards and we would hit the wrong gear and charge backwards towards him. No one was hurt in the entire exchange, but eventually we ran out of diesel and we legged it.

“So I have always had a keen interest in what goes on at Red Hall. “

Cllr Dixon referred to the late Conservative politician Enoch Powell’s comment that “all political endeavour is doomed to failure”.

He said: “There is a way around that and that’s to do what I’m doing now, which is to go at the time of my choosing and in a way of my of choosing and for that I’m eternally grateful.”