The Mayor of Tenby and five of her fellow councillors have moved to refute reasonings made by four members that resigned from the Town Council this week.

At the meeting held at the Mayor’s Parlour on Tuesday night (February 7), the town clerk read out resignation letters from three members, including former Mayor Cllr Sue Lane (who has served on the council for 36 years) Cllr Tony Brown and Cllr Matthew Ronowitz.

Following the meeting, after members went into ‘private’ discussions, two more councillors handed in their resignation notices - Councillors Tish Rossiter (who has served on the council for over 25 years) and Lynn Attewell.

The following day, four of the councillors that stood down (Lane, Rossiter, Brown and Attewell), issued the following statement to the Observer: “It is with great regret that we felt we had to resign. It was not a decision any of us took lightly. We’ve tried to make it work, but collectively we found it impossible to work with the current regime.

“We found that more and more, proceedings were run by a small cabal, with meetings held that excluded us from discussions and any decision making process.

“Furthermore, financial decisions were made without any knowledge or input of some councillors.

“Collectively, we felt that the current regime was taking us in a direction that we didn’t want to go, which resulted in a split council, leaving the situation untenable,” added the statement.

Following on from that, some of the remaining members of the Town Council (not including Councillors Paul Rapi and Jason Rossiter) have now, hit-back refuting some of the claims made by those that had left.

Those responding were current Mayor, Cllr Sam Skyrme-Blackhall, new Mayor-elect Cllr Dai Morgan, Cllr Charles Dale, Cllr Duncan Whitehurst, Cllr Trevor Hallett, and Cllr Laurence Blackhall, who took the following stance: “As remaining councillors of Tenby Town Council, we do not recognise the description of circumstances given in a statement by four councillors who have resigned this week.

“All decision making, including financial, is carried out democratically in the open; is recorded and is publicly available.

“In recent times Tenby Town Council has been doing more on supporting the community and looking at bringing ourselves up to date in line with best practice within the town and community council sector.

“We are sorry that these former councillors feel that they are unable to continue. We are grateful for all they have done for the town and wish them well in the future.

“There will be vacancies to fill on the council and we look forward to talking to people who are interested in joining the council and working with us for the benefit of the town,” they added.

The town clerk Andrew Davies said that if there was no election called for, to fill the vacancies, the town council would go down the route of co-opting new members.