A Ledbury town councillor breached the council’s code of conduct by mocking the use of gender pronouns in an email.

In an email to other councillors, Ewen Sinclair mocked the use of pronouns included in the email footer of a Herefordshire Council officer.

In the same email, he said he couldn’t take the subject matter of the email seriously because of the footer used by the officer.

Following a complaint, the county’s monitoring officer has ruled that Cllr Sinclair did breach the Ledbury Town Council Code of Conduct and has advised he attend code of conduct training.

The section of the code Cllr Sinclair has been found to have broken, states that councillors should “treat everyone that they deal with equally and with respect and courtesy”.

Responding to the ruling, Cllr Sinclair said he is not taking the matter seriously.

“I don’t really care about this pronoun business - there is more important stuff to deal with,” he said.

Councillor resigns from Conservative party

“This whole pronouns business is frankly nonsense - it’s part of the woke culture and I have a massive problem with it.

“I took the [uses swear word] and I’m not bothered about the monitoring officer. They are not elected and they do not represent the people of Ledbury.”

Asked why the use of pronouns had caused him to not take the subject of the email seriously, Cllr Sinclair said: “I made a very tongue-in-cheek comment. But I took the email very seriously. I have worked with the officer very closely on numerous occasions.”

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The councillor, who joined Ledbury Town Council last year, also said he has resigned from the Conservative party “because of the actions of MPs in Parliament”.

In a letter sent to Dan Hurcomb, chairman of North Herefordshire Conservatives Association, Cllr Sinclair said he didn’t think Rishi Sunak was fit to be Prime Minister and that he had only voted for Liz Truss during the summer’s Tory leadership campaign as she was the “least bad choice”.

Cllr Sinclair also said he thought local Conservatives were an “ineffective opposition” on Herefordshire Council.

He is planning on standing for Ledbury North at the next county council election as “an independent with Conservative values”.