A complaint about the chair of a council committee telling another councillor to “shut up” has been rejected by the monitoring officer.

At a meeting of Falmouth Town Council last week, town clerk Mark Williams gave a brief outline of the results of two complaints.

The first one concerned a complaint from councillors David Saunby, Dean Evans and Alan Jewell about the conduct of the chair of the finance and general purposes committee, Jude Robinson.

As reported by the Packet in October, Cllr Robinson interrupted Cllr Zoe Young, who is not a member of the committee, during a discussion of a ‘wash-up’ report on the Falmouth Tall Ship’s event.

Cllr Young had raised concerns about the ticketing of the event on the first day, but was interrupted by Cllr Robinson who told her: “If you don’t shut up I’m going to adjourn the meeting until you do shut up.”

However, after the meeting, Cllr Robinson emailed fellow councillors apologising for her actions.

She also wrote to the Packet saying although she thought the report on the incident was one sided she admitted she could have handled it better.

However Cllrs Saunby, Evans and Jewell felt she had breached the code of conduct and complained to the monitoring officer.

In his report, monitoring officer Simon Mansell said he took into account that Cllr Young was not a member of the committee and was told that the points she was making were not relevant.

“But they continued to talk over the subject member who was the chair of the committee,” he said.

He said he also noted that Cllr Robinson had emailed members of the committee on November 1 to apologise for her actions.

Rejecting the complaint he said: “With regards to the actions of the Subject Member [Cllr Robinson] at the meeting, it is considered that the approach taken was the wrong one with regards preventing the member from further speaking.

“In retrospect the Subject Member has noted that she should have stood as this should have prevented the member present from further speaking and telling her to ‘shut up’ was not the correct way to manage the situation, and this is agreed with.

“However, having taken into account all of the facts it is disappointing that even after an apology was given, the complaints relating to the conduct of the Subject Member were made.”

He said The Code of Conduct accepted that decisions made in the heat of the moment may be regretted later and members were given the opportunity to rectify the situation, which Cllr Robinson had done by apologising.

“I do consider that, given the conciliatory approach taken by the Subject Member in her apology, the matter is one which could have been resolved locally, and have achieved a more lasting local result, than by way of the ethical standards regime.”