AS suggested in last week’s letter entitled Council musings, I took a review of Lydney Town Council (LTC) minutes.

To my amazement I discovered that in the minutes of July 11 2016 it stated that: “delegated powers had been bestowed on the CEO (Town Clerk) in conjunction with the Mayor and Deputy Mayor to issue press statements.”

So the letter, under the guise of ‘Lydney Town Council’, was actually concocted by only two councillors and an employee.

The same minutes stated: “Cllr Preest proposed that delegated powers be bestowed on the CEO to request all district councillors to submit a written report on their activities undertaken on behalf of the town over the last six months.”

He knows full well, as do the others, that LTC has

no jurisdiction whatsoever over district councillors.

My immediate thoughts were that Council musings was nothing more than a covert conspiracy by LTC, instigated by Cllr Preest, to stab his fellow district councillors in the back.

Two of these councillors actually belong to his newly-acquired Conservative Party, under whose flag he now writes letters and who expelled him in the first place – why was this?

As rightly stated, Cllr Bevan and Cllr Osborne were elected to the district council, which is more than can be said for the remaining 12 – should be 15 – Lydney town councillors who are all unelected, as there were insufficient nominations to hold a proper election last time out.

Let us not forget that Cllrs Bevan and Osborne gave 22 years of combined, exemplary, voluntary service to LTC before moving to the well-earned, higher echelons of the district council.

As such any criticism levelled at them is completely unjustified.

So this covert conspiracy by Cllr Preest to humiliate these two highly respected councillors can only be likened to his disgraceful defection from UKIP when he let so many of the voters down.

Words that were prominent in my perusing of the minutes were “delegated powers to CEO” – at least seven times in the last three sets of minutes.

So how many delegated powers has the CEO, who is an employee and whose salary is paid for by the electorate, been given in the past?

With all these bestowed delegated powers it appears that Lydney Town Council is being run other than by its councillors, as should be the case.

Is this because the councillors are not qualified or capable of performing the duties associated with an unnecessary Quality Gold Council and as such are being led like lambs to the slaughter?

– Gordon Blake, Lydney.