A Cornwall Councillor has been forced to apologise after calling planning committee members "dictators" and accusing the chair of having a vendetta.

Peter Williams, the conservative councillor representing Mylor, Perranarworthal and Ponsanooth, made the apology to the planning committee at a recent meeting of Mylor Parish Council.

The apology follows a meeting held on March 21 this year when Mr Williams called the planning committee dictators and saying that the chairman Cllr John Symons had a vendetta against a particular applicant.

He said he wanted to apologise to the chairman and members of the planning meeting for remarks made at the meeting held on March 21.

He said he recognised that he should not have made them and hoped that the committee would accept his apology and move on. 

According to the meeting minutes of the Mylor Parish Council meeting held on March 30 in the Ord Statter Pavilion when asked for specifics, Councillor Williams said he was: "apologising for calling the planning committee dictators and that the chairman had a vendetta against a particular applicant.

"Councillor Scott asked for an assurance that going forward there would be more professional conduct shown, she just wanted people to be polite and civil to each other."

Speaking after the meeting, Cllr Symons said: "I took this accusation very seriously as there were two members of the public present."

He told the Packet: "I feel the clerk, the chairman and the divisional member has to work together to make any parish council work successfully but when the divisional member makes accusations of this kind about the parish council he represents it’s an uphill struggle for the parish."