Not my words – the words of Durham County Council Chairman Pauline Charlton today at a meeting of the full county council.

In advance of this meeting it was agreed that appointments to the new housing body for housing currently owned by Durham County Council would be politically balanced with two labour and one non-Labour councillor.

Officers even told opposition councillors that this was the case and told the leader of the independent group that one of their members would be the non-Labour member.

So today with all that agreed, along comes Labour and turns the whole thing on its head, completely undemocratically by forcing through three Labour members on the board, changing the report, ignoring the Labour Cabinet and breaching standard protocols.

I asked Labour leader Simon Henig after the meeting who was running the council now as it certainly wasn’t him and his response suggested I was right!

So the chairman thinks its a pantomime and the leader isn’t sure he’s running the council – something the rest of us have known for some time.

Durham County Council is an utter disgrace and is failing democratically to represent the people of this great County. Simon Henig should resign.