A Bedale town councillor who has resigned after only 16 months said this week that he felt his time had been wasted by needlessly long meetings.

Mike Batty said in his resignation letter on Monday that "95pc rhetoric and 5pc substance would be generous praise" for council proceedings.

He urged his former colleagues to talk less and "get on with the business", saying local people did not attend meetings because they found them repetitive, boring and tedious.

Mr Batty, a councillor since May 2003, became a rebel figure by advocating radical new arrangements for summer car boot sales so that a significant amount from charges and profits went into a management fund for Bedale Hall park, reducing the demands on council tax payers.

In February he walked out of an amenities committee meeting complaining that he had been repeatedly interrupted from the chair as he tried to put his case.

Questions were asked by some of his council colleagues a few weeks later after he decided to get his own message across by erecting a hand-painted sign asking motorists to slow down as they approached a 30mph zone on an entrance to Bedale.

In his resignation letter he said: "Reorganising the committee structure and frequency of the town council was created in order to expedite business.

"Instead of reducing the time spent at meetings it has merely served to extend the time for members to pontificate and repeat each other," he said: "The reason a lot of people don't come to listen is because they hear a lot of boring, repetitive, tedious things going round the table.

"It pushes them away from meetings. It is not that apathy is out there. Apathy is created in here because people are not learning what they come to learn."

He added: "If a committee has discussed ten items on an agenda, the chairman should take ownership of those items and bring them for ratification en bloc but not to repeat them."

But long-serving town councillor John Weighell thought Mr Batty was being unfair in view of the processes which members had to follow.

"We have to go through minutes, we have to have reports, we have reams of correspondence, much of it partly or wholly irrelevant, but we still have to do this.

"Being a councillor is a very boring and frustrating job at times at all levels. We have great sympathy with what you have said but you have to be patient."

* Council committee structure "not working": page 9

* Spectator's Notes: page 20