A ROW in which West Somerset District Council officers were accused of removing an agenda item from a meeting of the authority's watchdog committee was resolved this week. Performance committee chairman Cllr Simon Stokes had launched a thinly veiled attack on chief executive Tim Howes after a long awaited review of the council's Unit 5 failed to appear at the July meeting. But on Monday corporate director Adrian Dyer revealed that he had been responsible for the omission. He said he had believed that the committee had wanted an update, a brief resumé on each of the projects in which Unit 5 was involved. This had been included on an item detailing the virtual department's achievements which had previously been put before the council's cabinet and had been referred back to the performance committee. Mr Dyer said that, because he had been on leave before the July meeting, he had not had the opportunity to have his normal pre-meeting talks with Cllr Stokes. "So I took the decision to withdraw the original item because I thought the information requested had been provided in the report referred back by cabinet. "I took the decision on my own and I did not confer with Cllr Stokes, Mr Howes or the deputy chief executive Rod Latham. "It was withdrawn with the best of intentions." The committee has now received a report outlining the amount of cash earmarked for individual projects within the council's capital programme, based on its key priorities for which Unit 5 is responsible for delivering.
