Ten councillors have quit the Ashfield Independents in the past week after the party's former leader, Jason Zadrozny, was put back on the district council's planning committee following his conviction for fraud, the BBC has reported.
Matt Relf, the council's executive lead member for growth, regeneration and local planning, is among those to have left. He told the BBC the decision to appoint Zadrozny to the committee was "a step too far".
According to the BBC, 13 councillors now sit on Ashfield District Council in Nottinghamshire as non-aligned independents and 18 Ashfield Independents remain, leaving the party one councillor away from losing its majority. The council has not published an updated breakdown of its political groups, though the BBC has published the names of the ten.
The departures leave the administration that has run the council since 2018 under strain seven months before district elections in May, and five weeks before Zadrozny learns his sentence.
A jury at Northampton Crown Court found Zadrozny guilty on 21 September of nine counts of fraud and four counts of fraudulent evasion of income tax. He was cleared of three further fraud counts. The fraud charges concerned thousands of pounds taken from Nottinghamshire County Council funds between 2018 and 2021; the tax charges related to rental properties he let.
The prosecution told the court that Zadrozny set up an organisation called the Ashfield Heritage Society in February 2018, named himself chairman and was the only signatory on its bank account. James Varley KC, prosecuting, said: "He told the council 'this is a genuine organisation, they need some funds' and they gave him some funds but it was a scam."
Zadrozny denied the charges and told the court he had given the cash to a colleague to maintain war memorials. He is on bail and will be sentenced on 27 November. The judge, His Honour Judge David Herbert KC, said after the verdict that he was "plainly at risk of a custodial sentence."
Zadrozny resigned as council leader and from the Ashfield Independents group the day after the verdict, but he remains the councillor for Larwood ward. A conviction does not by itself remove a councillor from office; disqualification follows only a prison sentence of three months or more, including a suspended sentence.
Samantha Deakin, previously deputy leader, was elected leader at full council on 28 September by 21 votes to one, with one abstention. She has called on Zadrozny to stand down from the council entirely.
Councillors then appointed Zadrozny to the planning committee at a meeting earlier this month. Relf said that decision prompted his departure.
"The understandable controversy around Jason's conviction and the choices he made that led to that have upset and surprised a lot of people in the group," he told the BBC.
"With the election of a new leader we hoped that would put everything behind us, but unfortunately the decision to appoint Jason back on to the planning committee was just a step too far."
He described leaving the party as an "enormously upsetting" decision.
Lee Waters, the councillor for Hucknall Central, has also left the group, the Hucknall Dispatch reported on Thursday. In a statement he said: "I have decided to leave the Ashfield Independents and will continue representing Hucknall as a non-aligned Independent councillor." He added: "This decision follows a period of reflection, and I believe the time is right to move on."
Waters called for Zadrozny to resign in the days after the verdict and has said he will not stand again in May.
The planning appointment had already drawn criticism from MPs. Michelle Welsh, the MP for Sherwood Forest, told BBC Radio Nottingham: "I just can't believe we have got into a situation where somebody who has been convicted, not just charged, convicted for nine counts of fraud and four counts of fraudulent evasion of income tax is then appointed by his colleagues in a position that will make lifelong decisions on the people of Hucknall and across Ashfield."
Lee Anderson, the Reform UK MP for Ashfield, has written to the Housing Secretary asking for government intervention, describing the appointment as making the case "especially urgent".
Ashfield District Council has said committee appointments are decisions for elected councillors, and that officers can advise but cannot overturn decisions that have been lawfully agreed.
The group had already lost two councillors before this week. Warren Nuttall, who represents Greenwood and Summit, announced at the end of September that he was joining Reform UK, which later rejected his membership.
Neither Deakin nor the Ashfield Independents has responded publicly to the resignations. Zadrozny has said he will take advice from his legal team before deciding on any further steps.
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