Cllr Bill Lidgate to resign from Conservatives after by-election complaint (From Bucks Free Press)

Cllr Bill Lidgate to resign from Conservatives after by-election complaint

4:17pm Tuesday 30th October 2012 in News By Neil Phillips

A PROMINENT South Bucks District councillor has announced his intention to resign from the Conservative party after a complaint was made concerning his involvement in a recent by-election.

Cllr Bill Lidgate, who also sits on Buckinghamshire County Council, said today he has offered his resignation as an executive member of SBDC as a result – he had sat as cabinet member for the environment.

He will officially hand in his resignation as a Conservative Party member tomorrow, he added.

For the time being, he said, he intends to continue to represent his ward – Alderbourne, which includes Iver Heath and Denham – as an independent councillor at both district and county, but said he may decide to step down completely in the future.

Cllr Lidgate said in a letter that his decision had been prompted following an official complaint to the Beaconsfield Conservatives Council Association from the Iver branch.

He said BCCA is to hold a special executive meeting on November 26 to discuss Cllr Lidgate’s “involvement” in how independent candidate Sylvie Lowe won the Iver Heath by-election in August, defeating the official conservative candidate, Jacqueline Bryson.

Cllr Lidgate said this complaint had made his position as a Conservative Party member, and therefore as an executive member of SBDC, “untenable”.

Speaking to the Bucks Free Press this afternoon he said: “I’m angry and a bit sad but at the same time I also feel a bit liberated.

“I’m not happy with the way the Iver (Conservative) branch is behaving and that’s where we stand.”

He has been a Conservative Party member for 14 years and a member of SBDC’s cabinet for 12.

In his letter he added his thanks to the council officers with whom he had worked most closely in that time.