THE clerk of Croxley Green Parish Council has been suspended on full pay.

Mr Derek Fineberg sat expressionless as a packed public gallery gave a round of applause to the decision to suspend him at an extraordinary council meeting on Wednesday, January 16.

This follows questions about his conduct after the council was found guilty of sexual harassment and unfair dismissal against Mr Fineberg's former assistant, Mrs Lesley Sanders, at an employment tribunal in November.

The tribunal was the biggest in a long line of scandals, including six councillors resigning 18 months ago in protest about the way Mr Fineberg was running the council.

The tribunal heard Mr Fineberg had subjected Mrs Sanders to a series of lewd comments.

A panel of councillors has been set up to investigate whether he acted improperly. It will report back to a council meeting on Thursday, February 28. It will also examine the conduct of vice-chairman Mr John Hedges, who took the decision to sack Mrs Sanders.

After the meeting, an emotional Mr Fineberg said: "This council has been taken to the cleaners by senior members of the district council. It is as simple as that. And you can put that as your bloody headline."

It was a stormy and bitter meeting that at times looked like descending into farce.

The public gallery repeatedly jeered councillors, who sometimes did not seem to know what was going on.

One councillor Mr Giles Shaw scribbled a resignation letter and walked out half way through the meeting while another, Mr Gabriel Gallet, announced his resignation afterwards.

Mr Gallet said: "All this bloody lot do not deserve decent councillors. The clerk is a very nice man and your mate Roy Stockdill the Watford Free Observer's columnist will have a field day."

He then approached leader of the Three Rivers District Council Ann Shaw who had repeatedly heckled the meeting from the public section to tell her he was resigning.

He added he was not going to work for free any longer for such an ungrateful group of people.

She replied: "These are the people whose money you are spending."

In his letter, Mr Shaw wrote: "I have no wish to try to serve a community which takes so much pleasure in the undoing of an elected body."

There had been fears the meeting would brush the tribunal findings under the carpet, and for a long time this looked likely as councillors berated former councillors Mr Brian Norman and Mr Tim Davis.

The tribunal had found that because these two knew about Mr Fineberg's sexual comments and did nothing, the council was guilty of sexual harassment even though Mr Fineberg was not personally guilty.

New council chairman Mr Cliff Vassiliou said: "We were found guilty because of the inactions of two former councillors."

The public gallery reacted with anger when Mr Vassiliou suggested the council makes its decision in private and Mr Michael Johns' suggested motion that "Croxley Green Parish Council accepts the findings of the tribunal" was greeted with derision.

However, Mr Phil Brading who was alone in wanting Mr Fineberg sacked on the spot kept repeating that he should be suspended. With the atmosphere in the public gallery turning increasingly ugly, the mood of the meeting began to change.

Mr Brading said residents had begun asking how to withhold the parish council's share of their council tax and trying to find out how the council could be wound up.

He added: "I do not believe we can excuse the actions of the clerk. He needs to go.

In the end, only one councillor Mr Gallet voted against Mr Brading's proposal to suspend the clerk. There were six abstentions.

There were only three votes for Mr Vassiliou's counter-proposal to keep the clerk on while an investigation was held.

At the meeting, Mr Vassiliou claimed councillors had not known about allegations Mr Fineberg accessed pornographic websites on the office computer until the tribunal.

He asked if any councillors knew about the allegations and nobody said anything.

However, this contradicts evidence Mr Hedges gave to the tribunal. When asked why he took no action in respect of the clerk's activities, he replied: "I did not accept he had been looking at pornographic material on the Internet."

He added: "They the council were not given details of the further allegations."

Mrs Christine Jefford implied at the meeting that Mrs Sanders' husband, Ian, might have been responsible for an anonymous letter Mrs Jefford received in summer 2000.

In a bitter attack on Mrs Jefford, Mr Sanders called her a "hypocrite" and talked about her "abysmal performance".

Mrs Jefford replied: "I would not lower myself to respond to such a statement of hate but it does throw some light on the anonymous letter I received."

January 17, 2002 17:30