AN opposition councillor had said the council "moved mountains" to hide a recommendation to only partially sell the county's smallholdings.

Last week it was revealed that Herefordshire Council concealed part of a specialist report into the sale of the council's smallholdings by Fisher German, which advised that the council should keep some of its farms.

This advice, which was not made publicly available at the time, was ignored and the full council approved the full sale of all its smallholdings.

Liz Harvey, deputy leader of It's Our County who is member of the scrutiny committee and the task and finish group, said: "This is a distortion of the democratic decision-making process and a perversion of the public record.

"What’s the point of spending public money to receive expert advice only to move mountains then to bury it when it’s not what you want to hear?

"It appals me that the process of scrutiny has been so cynically and deliberately hampered and disrespected."

The Information Commissioner’s Office forced the council to reveal the recommendation from the report, which was commissioned by the council for £12,000.

This recommendation was withheld from councillors, the public and the tenant farmers themselves by council officers and cabinet members as parts of the report were redacted.

A Herefordshire Council spokesman said the initial draft Fisher German report was incomplete and never finalised, which is why the report was not relied upon by the council in any decision making.

But Fisher German said their report was complete.

Scrutiny requests for a less redacted report were refused repeatedly. And the council continued to claim that what had been redacted – including the main recommendation - was all "commercially confidential."

Despite ignoring Fisher German’s report on the future of the council’s smallholding estate, the council then awarded the consultants a further contract both to write the disposal strategy for all 45 farms and to be the agents for that sales programme.

Leader of It's Our County, Anthony Powers, said: "It’s Our County played the main role at the council in advocating at most only a partial sale of the farms estate.

"We won’t let this matter rest here. The council’s behaviour and its treatment of tenant farmers have caused outrage.

"We shall continue to challenge the soundness and validity of this decision by all possible means."