Councillor John Jarvis has announced he intends to resign from the office of leader when the council has its next full meeting on May 24th.

The Gazette has learned that he is stepping down for personal and medical reasons but will remain a councillor until the next county elections in 2015. He has been a councillor with Herefordshire Council for more than seven years and leader of the council for two years. During that time he has been forced to defend the budgetary cuts implemented by the Council.

He said: "During this time, I have worked with teams of dedicated, hardworking and professional people and would like to thank them for all their tremendous support, particularly in the last two years."

The Gazette will have more on this in next week's edition.