COUNCIL tax payers face a £2,686 bill after an employment tribunal yesterday found that a parish council clerk had been unfairly sacked.

A long-standing rift between two factions on Stanhope Parish Council was exposed at the hearing in Newcastle, which was told that some members had flouted expert advice over the dismissal of Val Ward last June.

The dispute went public in July when the council passed a vote of no confidence in chairman Tom Martin, claiming he had not implemented a decision taken in June to sack Mrs Ward.

Now the council must compensate the former health service executive for lost wages and expenses, as well as paying for a Newcastle solicitor to conduct their defence.

Mrs Ward did not apply to be reinstated in her £76-a-week ten-hour post, telling tribunal chairman Michael Malone that she would find it impossible to work with some members.

One meeting became so hostile, she said, that council vice-chairman John Shuttleworth ordered her out of the building.

Representing herself, she said: "The whole thing has been very stressful.

"The upset of being dismissed from the council has been the worst thing that has happened to me in 40 years of public life."

The row blew up last April after Mrs Ward raised the issue of a national employment agreement which, she said, should be implemented as a condition for achieving Quality Status.

Some members, including witness Angela Bolam, believed that Mrs Ward was not a council employee, although an earlier hearing ruled that she was.

Mrs Bolam said she had not sought legal advice, although there was evidence that an expert from the County Durham Association of Town and Parish Councils had addressed a meeting.

Tribunal chairman Mr Malone said the council had acted unfairly.

He said: "They deliberately chose not to seek advice because it was convenient to believe that the claimant wasn't an employee and had no protection rights."

Mrs Ward said that her supporters, including chairman Tom Martin and past chairman Harry Irwin, had been ostracised by other members, including some who had 'wrested control'.

She said: "The chairman and immediate past chairman advised them that what they were doing was illegal.

"It was not that they didn't have advice, it was simply that they didn't like the advice they were given."