A LEAKED email seen by the News suggests the Conservative leadership of Wokingham Borough Council considered using council money to give their candidates a helping hand in this month's local elections.

The email from Keith Baker, leader of the council, was sent on February 10 after the borough was given £2.1m of transitional relief funding.

The Westminster grant was given to a number of councils to help them cope with drastic reductions in their funding.

The dynamite note outlines how the Tories were planning to strengthen their chances at the May 5 elections which saw little change in the council's make up with the Conservatives winning two seats whilst losing one.

It's unclear from the email what specific purpose the money would have been used for. In the email cllr Baker suggests two points.

It reads: "1. We use the £2.1m to cover the shortfall instead of using the reserves.

"2. We take a long hard look at whether we can release some of the £1.7m reserves that was earmarked to cover the shortfall to provide a 'boost' to candidates on election year by some additional spending in some critical areas; I expect the Budget Group will be major contributors on this.

"For item 2, if this is possible, the plan would be to not announce it at the budget setting meeting [February 18] but do it sometime afterwards, say March.

"This would need to take into consideration the purdah period but we think we can do this."

Purdah is a period before an election where there are restrictions on the activity of politicians and council officers.

When challenged on the email at a meeting of Wokingham Borough Council on Thursday, May 19, he told councillors: "I don't comment on leaked documents. That didn't happen. It's something that was a suggestion and it didn't happen."

Responding to his comments at the meeting, Prue Bray, leader of the Liberal Democrat opposition said their party had launched an official complaint.

But she explained they and had only held off calling a vote of no confidence because it needed seven day's notice and the backing of 10 councillors.

"I can't come up with another way the email he sent on 10th Feb can be interpreted as he wanted to spend council money to give conservative candidates an advantage in the elections," she said.

"Whether this happened in neither here nor there.

"We think cllr Baker should stand aside. We need a leader who will put the interests of the borough in front of his own political party."

Speaking the morning after the meeting cllr Baker said: "I reject wholeheartedly the accusations made by the Leader of the Liberal Democrats.

"What her leaked document doesn’t show is the long trail of emails in which the option she points to was swiftly rejected by myself and other Members of my Group.

"The option in my email had been suggested by another Member.

"I also do not think that the Liberal Democrat Leader should be calling other people’s integrity into question.

"When she was challenged in the meeting about misleading residents in the press over why Council could not debate the Elms Field petition, she again claimed that it was not a live planning application.

"This is completely untrue. Not only was it stated in the same article in which she was quoted, by a Council spokesperson, but has again been confirmed by officers.

"This is yet another example of the Leader of the Opposition making comments that are wide of the mark, as she did during the election."