A report suggests a council's ruling Conservative group broke the rules by imposing a party whip on a vote on controversial housing plans - but the outcome was still lawful.

Three councillors were suspended from Bracknell Forest Council's Tory group after defying a party whip relating to its Site Allocations Policy Development Plan Document (SADPD), setting out where thousands of homes should go in the borough.

However, a report by council officers, recommends the council's standards committee finds that applying a whip contravened the Planning Protocol for Members, which states, "Don't impose the Party Whip in connection with a planning matter".

The report says, though, the vote on the SADPD on November - where a majority of councillors agreed to move to the next stage, a public consultation exercise - was still lawful. Cllr Paul Bettison, leader of the majority Tory group, said: "The protocol was wrong, therefore it needs to be changed.

He said the SADPD was a policy issue, not a planning issue, and said: "When it's planning policy decisions, you need the whip. There's no doubt about that. You couldn't manage the council if you didn't.

"The fact is that the people who voted not in accordance with the whip didn't change the outcome of the vote." He added: "We need to deal with this as soon as possible so we can get on with the important business of letting people build houses for those people who need them, for the homeless." The council's standards committee - made up of councillors and other community figures - is due to decide today (Monday) whether the Planning Protocol should be reviewed. The matter was investigated by officers after the issue was referred to them by an unnmamed councillor.

Of the three councillors who defied the whip, Cllr Chas Bailey rejoined the Conservative group after the four-month suspensions expired in May but Cllr Michael Sargeant and Cllr Shelagh Pile have chosen to remain as independent Conservatives.

Cllr Pile said: "I would still vote the way I did because I still feel that what I did was, I felt, correct. I think it should be a free vote." She added the committee might decide they should not have been suspended but Cllr Bettison said: "You can't rewrite history.

"The sanction has now terminated anyway. We need to move on and correct this and not worry about what happened in the past."