Councillors website taken off line

His claims were countered by the council who accused him of breaking the Code of Conduct.

It was last Friday that Cllr Hancock's council run website was taken offline after six weeks of discussions due to the inclusion of several "libellous claims".

Cllr Hancock, who represents Ore, said: "This is an attack upon free speech and democracy.

"This act of gagging an elected councillor and trying to prevent the public from knowing the truth, is deeply offensive to me.

"There was nothing on my council website which was not true and there were no personal campaigns. I have been censored."

The drama began on August 9 when Mary Clarke, the scrutiny and democratic services manager at the council, sent an email to cllr Hancock informing him they had received a complaint regarding the content of his website.

The website, supplied by the council, carried the council logo as well as the affiliated party of the individual councillor and enabled a forum for the councillor to reach the public.

At this time Cllr Hancock, who switched from Labour to the Liberal Democrats earlier this year, was asked to remove several "offending" statements from the website, which he did not do as "they were true".

Among those statements were references to the Labour Group, four organisations and the Council's Deputy Leader Jay Kramer.

On August 13 Ms Clarke sent another email to him addressing the exact comments and asking for them to be removed as they fell within purposes for which the site cannot be used.

These were, anything which may result in actions for libel, defamation or other claims for damage, personal campaigns and using the site in an abusive manner.

The matter then fell silent for over a month until September 16 when the council's solicitor Jayne Butters sent an email to him with detailed reasons why the comments had to be removed.

On September 22 Cllr Hancock then met Ms Butters to discuss the issue, but on September 23 he received another, even more detailed email demanding the removal of the comments by September 23 or the website would be withdrawn.

At 10.30am last Friday the website was withdrawn by the borough council.

A spokesman for Hastings council said: "We consider the views Cllr Hancock has put on our website to be inappropriate and we believe if they remained we ourselves could have had action taken against us as we were providing the facility.

"It contradicts the code of practise he agreed to abide by.

"He can't use a council provided facility in that kind of way.

"It's meant to be impartial, A-political and not meant to carry that kind of message.

"If he wants to make those kind of comments he can do it on his own website.

"In our view he has broken the Code of Conduct and getting involved in personal attacks is clearly something we can't do."

Cllr Hancock now has his own website with the same content, and the council and his affiliated party logos - which the council objected to in the first place.

At the time of going to press the new website was still online and no legal action has been taken.

A council spokesman said: "There is no question at all of us trying to gag him. We have no problem at all with him having his own website and he can accept the consequences, but by using our logo we appear responsible by association. We are defending ourselves from a libel action by telling him he is not allowed to use our logo and asking him to remove it from his personal website."

p Cllr Hancock's new website can be found on www.davidhancock.org.uk