CONTROVERSIAL TV show ‘Don’t Blame the Council’ was left off tonight’s Wigan Council Meeting agenda.

In the explosive town council meeting, Councillor Gareth Fairhurst had to be reminded by Mayor Susan Loudon that discussions about the TV show were not allowed due to an investigation and a possible future appeals process.

Ironically in a discussion about standards Cllr Brierley was silenced by the Mayor after doubting the amount of money the council had spent on standards investigations regarding himself, which was revealed as £30,000 of the £110,000 spent.

After being silenced by Cllr Loudon, Cllr Brierley left the council chamber while calling chief executive Donna Hall a “liar”.

Opposition member Cllr Gareth Fairhurst had proposed a motion calling for an explanation of the decision to allow TV crews behind the scenes of council services.

But the motion was not added to the agenda as officers said it had not been seconded.

Cllr Fairhurst denies this, claiming the motion was seconded by his father, Cllr George Fairhurst.

However after the meeting Cllr Loudon and Donna Hall explained why the TV show was not allowed to be discussed but said that it will come back to council in the near future.

Cllr Loudon said: “Whatever happens we want the right ending to the inquiry and if there is an appeal and obviously councillors will be part of that process so if they start to discuss it here then it is not fair.

“There will be an opportunity once it is all over with and we have an outcome we will be able to come back here and discuss it and then it will be a completely free discussion, but we can’t discuss it at the moment.

Meanwhile Chief Executive Donna Hall said: “We would like it to be done quickly but it could take quite a while, like these things do.

“We are wanting to investigate the actions that led to the production of it coming out in the way that it did in terms of who saw it, how was it allowed, who signed the contract and all the build up to it.

“It’s not about the staff that are in it it’s more about the managements actions that allowed us to get in that position.

“Staff have been interviewed for their experience of being filmed and how they got into that position of saying those things.

“It is more around the decisions that we have taken co-operatively as an organisation rather than those individuals and we are now subject to this investigation.

“We are trolling through emails and interviewing people at the moment.”

Cllr Loudon added: “It is really difficult. You can’t make decisions on something that you have seen on television, you just can’t.

“You didn’t see the whole interview or what was really said, what the questions where that were asked.

“We couldn’t make a decision on people that were part of that show to say they did something wrong because we don’t actually know, we have got to look further back than that.”