Date set for adjourned Armitage hearing (From The Oxford Times)

Date set for adjourned Armitage hearing

10:30am Thursday 7th February 2013 in News

LORD Mayor of Oxford Alan Armitage could learn his fate on Wednesday, February 27.

A standards committee which will rule on whether or not Mr Armitage broke the councillors’ code of conduct has set a tentative date for the meeting.

Mr Armitage, a Lib Dem councillor for Oxford’s North ward, is accused of making inappropriate comments to a teenage girl at an event in Iffley Road last June.

The standards board initially met on January 14, but the meeting was adjourned after Mr Armitage told councillors he wanted to change his position.

Council legal chiefs said they had expected the politician to accept the findings of a report on his conduct.

Reporters were excluded from the meeting in January. The exclusion was justified on the grounds that there was a potential that the girl in question and other witnesses might be identified during the proceedings.

The decision was made by councillors despite an undertaking by the Oxford Mail that the girl and witnesses would not be named.