FORMER parish councillors claim a lack of openness and transparency sparked a mass walk out by six of them.

Bob Puzey, Elizabeth Jordan, Sian Newbert, Guy Smith, Bridget Vine, Chris Barron all tendered their resignation last month from Walford Parish Council, which is chaired by Cllr Monica Van Lienden.

They say one of the catalysts for resigning was the lack of information over why the neighbourhood development plan for future building in the parish was pulled from a meeting just 24 hours before it was due to be discussed in August.

The council said it was “with great regret” that it received the resignations, and the August 12 meeting was postponed owing to “the absence of a clerk”, and the need to check the “complex” regulatory process with the Herefordshire Association of Local Councils.

Former parish councillor Sian Newbert revealed that resigning had been a difficult decision, and said: “I did it with regret because I first became a councillor last year and I had been quite active and committed to doing my bit for the community. We had been on the council for a year and things weren’t improving. We weren’t debating things properly and information wasn’t readily available to all councillors.

“Generally, we didn’t know what was going on a lot of the time and when we made requests for information, we didn’t always get answers.

“What was a catalyst for my resignation was the way the NDP had been handled.’’

Former council colleague Chris Barron, who was on the NDP steering group, said the plan was being brought to a stage by which the council could review it. The council had been provided with progress reports at each meeting and they had so far held four public consultations, with 157 people attending the most recent event.

“All the documentation, as it was being produced, was published either on the parish council or NDP-specific website and all meetings were open to the public,” he said.

“The NDP had progressed to the point where an independent consultant had undertaken a review of all the development sites that had been offered. There were 34 of them and they have all been mapped and circulated publicly so their locations are known.

“This document looks at each of the sites in turn and assesses their potential viability for inclusion in the NDP.

“It had been agreed by the steering group chair, the chair of the parish council, the vice chair and the clerk to present it to an extraordinary meeting of the parish council,” said Mr Barron.

“That meeting was scheduled to be held on August 12. Twenty four hours before it was due to take place, the chair of the parish council withdrew the item from the agenda.

“There was no discussion with councillors. It was removed on the basis she (Cllr Van Lienden) had consulted with the chief executive of Herefordshire Association of Local Councils and taken advice that there were potential irregularities with the documentation.

“The object of that extraordinary meeting was a presentation. There were no decisions to be made.

“The document would have been presented and passed to councillors who would then have however long they required to look at it.

“Then at a subsequent parish council meeting they would be asked to give their views on how to proceed on any public consultation and ultimately what options for development sites should be incorporated into the NDP.”

A statement by the parish council said the resignations “came as something of a surprise”.

‘‘The pandemic has been an incredibly challenging time for everyone,” it says. “All parish council meetings have been held online since March and that presents difficulties for rural communities where the broadband capability is limited, making communication more challenging.

“It was with great regret that the parish council received the resignations - it was disappointing particularly when several of the councillors were elected to office by the Walford parishioners.’’

It adds that the information relating to the Walford NDP is in the public domain and has been published on the Walford NDP website.

“There is a complex regulatory framework around the NDP and in the absence of a clerk, it was necessary to check process with the Herefordshire Association of Local Councils (HALC) prior to publication of the documents to ensure compliance with this framework; this led to the cancellation of the meeting on August 12,” it says.

“A subsequent audit of all NDP documentation has been undertaken and going forward a new NDP Committee has been created to manage the NDP process… These (virtual) meetings will be advertised on the parish council website and the council would urge all residents to attend.’’

But former councillor Guy Smith claimed there was “something wrong” at the council as eight parish councillors had resigned since November.

“The whole way the NDP was pulled to a halt is quite indicative of how the council has been running,” he claimed. “I was considering resigning before the issue with the NDP, but it was the thing that pushed me over the edge.”

Ms Newbert added: “It was such a good NDP and it was so important and supported that we are all at a bit of a loss.”

The parish council has recently come under fire for topping the Herefordshire county list for the highest number of complaints - nine - against its members in 2018. And the local authority heard last month that it and Llangarron parish council were among the highest over the last year for complaints against councillors allegedly failing to declare a financial interest, with six reports each.

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Herefordshire Council’s audit and governance committee has asked the authority to check on resignations as a way of tracking where things are going wrong.