A FORMER council leader has called for 'meaningless' complaints in local government to be thrown out more quickly after being the subject of a lengthy investigation.

Blaenau Gwent councillor Hedley McCarthy (Labour, Llanhilleth) has spoken out after he was recently cleared of a complaint about a remark he made at an appointments committee meeting in July.

At a meeting last month the complaint was rejected by the council's standards committee.

Speaking afterwards, Cllr McCarthy said: "Even though you have done nothing wrong and the charges are silly you still have that worry that everything could go wrong.

"I am grateful to the standards committee for the thorough way they investigated it and they said clearly I have done nothing wrong."

Cllr McCarthy said it is important to have a 'robust' complaints procedure but said that 'meaningless' complaints should be thrown out swiftly.

"What they accused me of was nonsensical," he said.

"People have got a right to complain if there's a cause for it otherwise it should be rooted out and rejected."

The complaint was made when an appointments committee was held to interview for a new chief officer of resources, Cllr McCarthy said.

"I questioned the ballot paper which for the first time had a box saying 'do not appoint,'" said Cllr McCarthy, who has been a councillor for 27 years and was leader from 2012 until 2015.

"I said it was 'curious' because it was the first time in living memory that I had seen such a box.

"Little did I know that my comment was going to cause such grave offence."

After making the remark, Cllr McCarthy was offered the opportunity to apologise - under the complaints procedure - but he declined to do so, insisting he had done nothing wrong.

The case then went to a formal hearing on October 30.

Cllr Steve Thomas, leader of the Labour group who was a witness in the case, said he was concerned about the amount of time and money spent on the case.

He said: "There should be a test around these cases because the money spent on putting this together could have been spent better elsewhere."

Blaenau Gwent council said it was not able to comment as it was an "internal matter."

Leader of the council, Cllr Nigel Daniels, has been contacted for comment.