A senior Warwick councillor cleared of allegations of misleading and disrespectful comments insisted “the public aren’t interested” in the row that instigated them.

Warwick District Council has confirmed that a two-pronged complaint against Cllr Jim Sinnott (Lab, Warwick Saltisford), the political lead on communities and leisure, has been closed with no further action. 

A statement from the district’s head of governance and monitoring officer Graham Leach, the council’s most senior legal authority, read: “An alleged breach of the code of conduct for showing disrespect to a councillor during a council meeting and misleading council in response to questions was closed by the monitoring officer with no further action following a statement to council by Councillor Sinnott, which was considered as a local resolution.”

In that statement, delivered at the following meeting for all district councillors on November 27, Cllr Sinnott admitted he had been “incorrect” to refer to a fellow member – complainant Cllr Jan Matecki (Con, Budbrooke) – by surname only and that it had been “poor form”, but stopped short of issuing a public apology. 

Both councillors have acknowledged that an emailed apology had been issued over the surname issue but Cllr Matecki did not feel that was adequate given that the original comment was made in public and asked in November’s meeting whether his political rival would be prepared to apologise.

Cllr Sinnott declined, saying he believed the matter had been dealt with through his previous statement. 

When approached by the Local Democracy Reporting Service after the closure of the complaints process, Cllr Sinnott said it had been “a non-story and the public aren’t interested” and did not wish to comment further.