THE ex-Mayor who quit the Conservatives and defected to the Liberal Democrats says he supports the community stadium project.

Councillor Paul Lamborne, who crossed the floor last week, criticised the leadership of Cllr Lesley Clarke and hit out on the row between two former mayors.

But he told the Free Press that unlike Cllr Dennis Green, who also recently resigned from the Tory party, it was not because of the proposed sports village and ground for Wycombe Air Park.

He said: “I can't tell lies. I have always supported the stadium because representing Sands I have not had one letter or email or phone call asking me to speak against it or objecting to it.

“I've only had 2 letters and they've both come from Hazlemere residents.

"All I could do really was acknowledge their letters and suggest they speak to their own councillor.”

But he added: “I can understand why other councillors are complaining about the stadium especially up in Cressex, Chiltern Rise, those areas that will be affected.”

"If you go back over the years, they've never had the size of majority they've got now - 39 out of 60. You'll never please everybody.”

Asked if this majority was damaging to the democratic process he said: “I wouldn't like to make a comment on that one.”

He said: “You'll never know the sleepless nights I've had in recent days coming to this decision to resign.

"It's not been easy, I haven't taken the decision lightly.”

But he added there had been no backlash from Tory friends.

Despite “dreading” going to the council offices last week, the reaction was “quite polite”, he said.

“A had a nice email from Tony Green saying how sorry he was I decided to go over to the Liberals, others have said 'we'll still be talking to you, don't worry about it'.

He said, not only had he served as a Tory on Wycombe District Council for eight years, firstly in 1999, he had always been a Conservative voter.

Cllr Lambourne had intended to stand down at this May's elections.

But he now hopes to be selected as a Lib Dem candidate in a different ward.

“I wasn't going to stand anyway but I was so angry about the behaviour about some of our councillors especially in that public meeting on the charter trustees,” he said.

Cllrs Jane White and Julie Pritchard have been involved in a bitter war of words about the accounts of the mayor's charity appeal.

He said this had been “the straw that broke the camels back”.