Hadleigh North's Sian Dawson has been identified as the councillor that has been removed from Babergh's planning committee after causing a costly abandonment of a planning meeting.

Although Babergh did not name Cllr Dawson, Conservative, in the results of an investigation, or when subsequently asked by the Press, she was identified by a process of elimination.

Other planning committee members were also quick to confirm they were not the guilty party.

Cllr Dawson was standing in for fellow Conservative Group councillor Simon Barrett at the planning committee hearing at Wherstead Park on August 10 when she breached the council's charter by passing around a document during a comfort break.

Cllr Dawson sitting in middle of back row at meeting before her actions led to an adjournment

The halt in proceedings meant an application to decide on the construction of 41 retirement living apartments at Belle Vue, Sudbury, and the conversation and restoration of Belle Vue House, had to be stopped mid-deliberations.

The chairman closed the meeting, which meant that and three other applications could not be heard, leaving members of the public, agents, applicants and objectors, some who had been at the meeting since 9.30am having a wasted day.

Babergh Monitoring Officer Emily Yule launched an investigation and found that while the document had not influenced councillors in their deliberations, Cllr Dawson clearly breached the code.

All of the planning committee apart from Cllr Dawson from that August 10 planning committee were today at a new meeting, which heard the three postponed applications.

That confirmed that none of those councillors were the ones removed from the planning committee, leaving just councillor Dawson as the guilty party.

Even though she would not have been at today's meeting as Cllr Barrett took his place, she is clearly the only one removed from being allowed to attend the committee.

Cllr Dawson has been approached for comment.

Full Babergh investigation story here...

The incident is just the latest embarrassing episodes for the Babergh Conservative Group, and the South Suffolk Conservative Association, following a code of conduct upheld against their leader Simon Barrett, by the monitoring officer, after he made a rude gesture towards the Babergh Council leader John Ward.

Full story here...

The incident is the latest in a litany of incidents involving the Conservative representative.

These include:

Picking her nose and eating the contents at a public meeting captured on video.

Full story and video here:

Being instrumental in a Babergh cabinet reshuffle which resulted in her losing her place along with all her fellow Conservative group members. Consequently the Tories lost all chair and voice chair positions on all other Babergh committees.

Full story here...

Ordered the removal of charity banners in the town.

Dawson lambasted...

Made at least one false and inaccurate monthly district council report to Hadleigh town councillors.

Misleading Hadleigh councillors...

Accused of lying about leader John Ward in a radio interview

Full story here...

In July 2015, Dawson was forced to resign as a magistrate and was found to have abused her position as a JP.

A panel from the Judicial Conduct Investigations Office looked into allegations that she had twice tried to use her position as a magistrate for personal advantage.

A statement from the JCIO at the time said: "A Disciplinary Panel recommended that Dr Dawson be removed from the judiciary, but she resigned before the disciplinary process had been formally concluded.

"Her resignation took effect from 20 July 2015. Had she not resigned, the Lord Chancellor and the Lord Chief Justice would have removed her from judicial office."