A CAMPAIGNER who claimed she was assaulted by a councillor has failed to get the Local Government Ombudsman to intervene.

Jane Alexander, a member of the Save Temple Cowley Pools group, alleged Oxford City Council ’s Bryan Keen assaulted her after she interrupted a council meeting about controversial plans to close the pool.

The council’s standards committee rejected her complaint in June, saying it put a “great deal of weight” on the statement of a police officer at the meeting.

Pc Matt Coburn, who attended the meeting as Thames Valley Police ’s Cowley Inspector, said Mr Keen’s actions did not constitute assault.

The council’s investigation cleared the Labour councillor for Cowley and the Ombudsman said this showed no signs of “maladministration”.

Ms Alexander had raised questions about the planned closure of Temple Cowley Pools during a slot reserved for public speaking at last year’s meeting.

She returned to her seat in the public gallery and, in her own statement to the council, said she interrupted the meeting of the Cowley area committee.

She said Mr Keen asked her to be quiet and walked towards her in a “highly threatening and intimidating manner, jabbing his finger at me”.

He was “clearly trying to shut me up. He grabbed me with both hands just below my shoulders in an effort to turn me towards the door.

“I immediately said loudly ‘take your hands off me’ which he did.

“I do not believe that he would have behaved in the same way had I been a man.”

But Mr Keen told the Oxford Mail: “She was still shouting and going on and I asked her to leave the meeting.

“I patted her on the arm to try and get her out the room.

“That was all that happened.”

Council rules allow members of the public who disrupt meetings to be evicted, he said.

The November 3 meeting was suspended for five minutes.

He said of Ms Alexander’s complaint: “It is totally wrong.

“No assault took place. I touched her arm because she was causing such a rumpus.”

The Ombudsman said it could only intervene over the council’s investigation and not the incident itself.

It rejected Mrs Alexander’s complaint that further witnesses were not interviewed, saying this is not a requirement, and said there was no evidence the council “misrepresented” her complaint.

Mrs Alexander yesterday said: “I think it is appalling. This isn’t justice, this is silencing the public.”

The Save Temple Cowley Pools group is fighting council plans to demolish the East Oxford complex to help pay for a new £9m swimming pool in Blackbird Leys, for which work has begun.