Minister 'bullied' council into election delay

A council leader has accused the local government secretary of being a "bully" who made "threats" about funding if she spoke out against local elections being postponed.

Norfolk County Council's Kay Mason Billig made the claim after the government reversed its decision to delay voting this year.

Mason Billig, a Conservative councillor, used strong language during a full council meeting on Tuesday as she criticised Steve Reed, who she said had warned that Norfolk would lose out on funding if she called for elections to go ahead.

A source at the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) described her comments as "baffling and shocking".

Last year's elections to the county council were delayed for 12 months after the authority agreed to move forward with proposals for devolution and local government reorganisation.

In addition, plans to elect a mayor for Norfolk and Suffolk were put back at the end of last year, with the government later postponing the council election again.

Yesterday, however, ministers reversed that decision following a legal challenge from Reform UK.

Last month, Mason Billig was criticised for not asking for elections to take place.

But she told Tuesday's meeting that Reed "had made threats, not to my face, but through various back channels" that Norfolk would not get additional devolution funding and powers if she did otherwise.

Calling him a "two-faced bully" she went on to say she wanted to quote Rik Mayall's character Rick in 1980s TV comedy The Young Ones.

Spelling out a word, she said: "What an utter, utter B-A-S-T-A-R-D."

She added that her Conservative group would no longer work with the government on local government reorganisation and that devolution was "off".

A spokesman for MHCLG said Mason Billig's claims were "untrue" and that devolution had "never been contingent on the timing of local authority elections".

He added "we remain committed to working with all local partners on devolution in Norfolk and Suffolk".

A source in the department also told the BBC her comments were "baffling and shocking".

"She should reflect on her own leadership given her inability over recent weeks to communicate a clear position on election delays," they said.

Under the devolution deal, Norfolk and Suffolk would receive extra decision making powers and more than £37m of extra funding from central government each year.

Labour group leader Steve Morphew said whilst he "understood people feel fed up" he believed it was still valuable.

Urging restraint, he said he thought "the knee-jerk reaction of ditching the local government reorganisation and devolution frankly is premature".

Liberal Democrat group leader Brian Watkins said the government's U-turn on elections was "a damning indictment of their incompetence".

The proposed reforms to local government would replace the two-tier system of district and county councils that exists in many parts of England with new unitary authorities responsible for delivering all council services in their area.

The government had previously said some councils were concerned about their capacity to run the polls in May alongside the overhaul of town halls, as well as the cost to taxpayers of holding elections for councils that were due to be abolished.

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