THE revelation there will be a gap of four months between Newport City Council meetings after one due to be held this week was cancelled has prompted a furious reaction.

This week the Argus revealed a meeting of the full council scheduled for Tuesday had been cancelled. With the most recent full council meeting held on September 27 and the next scheduled for January 31, this leaves a gap of four months between meetings.

The council has said leader Cllr Debbie Wilcox and deputy mayor Cllr David Fouweather had jointly decided to cancel the meeting as there were no decisions which were required to be debated and no members had submitted questions or resolutions for debate.

The revelation was met with dismay on the Argus’ Facebook page, with Gary Williams calling it a “disgrace”.

Branding the authority “an embarrassment”, Paul Blandford wrote: “They’re nowhere to be seen in the Ringland regeneration, but will no doubt have their faces in the paper when it comes to starting the ground work or finishing it.”

Rhys Richards said: “Why didn’t they get out into the city’s estates if there was no business at the civic centre.

“Then they would see how bad our estates are.

“Not just concentrate on Friars Walk etc. Some of these subways are disgusting for starters.”

And Stephanie Jackson wrote: “It makes you wonder, must be too easy running Newport.”

Explaining why he had signed off on the decision, Conservative Cllr Fouweather said the agenda members had been presented with contained no items, so to hold a meeting would have been pointless.

But the Allt-yr-yn ward member said he would not have done so if councillors were allowed to ask questions without notice rather than submitting all items for discussion beforehand and called for this way of working, which was abolished in Newport in 2012, to be reinstated.

View the calendar of the council’s meetings at newport.gov.uk.