LATE CORRECTION: Greens are independent of the Independent Group but Ollie David accepted the role as Lead Member for Environmental Health and the other Green councillor accepted the role of Lead Member for Health and Wellbeing.

How does a group of Independent Councillors sack an independent councillor?

We know how parties and alliances do or might sack a member councillor – they would have a committee meeting of elected members, make a decision and communicate it to other members and the councillor concerned.

But the “Independent Group” appears to have simply decided it was a group and elected itself a leader in the first week of the new council. As it then had the most seats, its Leader got to be Leader of the new council. Green Party councillors also joined the Independent Group (can you be even be Independent and Green Party?). It did not follow up with a committee or internal executive as far as we know, the Leader simply chose Cabinet and other roles for councillors – some of whom were Tories (eg Head of Development Management Committee) and one of whom was an East Devon Alliance member (Dan Ledger – Procurement).

So, did the Leader unilaterally decide to sack Councillor Paul Millar from the Independent Group, or were all of its members involved in the decision or just a small number of them? If so, were Tory councillors and Green councillors also involved in the decision (it seems unlikely the EDA councillor would have been consulted)?

Who initiated the call for the sacking? Were officers involved and, if so, how and why? Will the Monitoring be involved? Was the Monitoring Officer involved? Was the inexperienced, young councillor offered advice or extra training in his new role?

So many questions!