FORMER Minehead Mayor Andrew Kingston-James has been ‘thrown under a homophobic bus’ with publicity over his receipt of an ‘unlawful’ £25,000 honorarium, his husband Mark Kingston-James said.

Auditors PKF Littlejohn last week published a ‘public interest report’ into the award of the money by Minehead Town Council in July, 2022.

The firm said the honorarium was paid to Andrew Kingston-James, who was at the time a town councillor and mayor, for his work in defending the authority against an unfair dismissal claim made by a clerk it had sacked.

But it said there were no legal powers for a council to make such a payment.

Andrew Kingston-James did not respond to a Free Press request for comment, but Mark Kingston-James, who was also a town councillor at the time, has now posted a defence in an online blog.

The blog contained a letter from the council’s then-deputy clerk Bryan Howe dated August 9, 2022, thanking Andrew Kingston-James for his work to ‘bring this case to a satisfactory conclusion’.

The letter also set out how the council had agreed to make the payment in a secret session not attended by Andrew Kingston-James and how the sum had been calculated.

The blog also contained an extract from what was said to be a barrister’s email thanking Andrew Kingston-James ‘for his meticulous work after the case was won’.

Mark Kingston-James said: “Andy had saved the council a substantial amount of money by handling a complicated case.

“Payments were not asked for by the mayor, this was agreed at full council in a confidential session even before the 2022 elections took place.

“The mayor was not present at any of the meetings to discuss, so could not have had any influence on this.

“The agreement was approved by full council and minuted at the time, some of whom are still on the council.

“The persons that requested the public interest report have now cost the taxpayer approximately four times more than the council awarded the mayor at the time.

“We believe this is a politically driven campaign against an independent council by the ring leader of a certain local political party whose own public interest reports times two received very little media attention.

“It could also be seen as a homophobic attack on both Andy and myself as we have been subject to previous attacks by those who have used this for their own personal gain.

“We do not see pictures of Minehead Town Council or the officers or any of the councillors who authorised this.”

Mark Kingston-James said despite what the auditors had stated, advice to the town council showed it did have powers to award councillors an honorarium ‘for work over and above their call of duty’.

He said the £25,000 was agreed because Andrew Kingston-James, who worked as a human resources consultant, was ‘fully employed at that time’ but it was obvious he had been ‘working nearly full-time on this case at certain points’.

The town council said it would shortly hold a special meeting in public to discuss the auditor’s report.