An entire Devon parish council is to undergo code of conduct training after its own chairman sparked a standards hearing against one of its members.

Cllr Denis Onley, who chairs Ermington Parish Council, reported Cllr Cliff Sumner, saying he voted in a debate on repairing the church clock when he should have declared an interest. He also raised questions over the tone of an email Cllr Sumner then sent to the council clerk.

The vote on agreeing a grant towards repairing the clock’s chimes happened in January, and although Cllr Sumner had resigned from the church electoral roll in December, the investigating officer deemed that he still had an interest in the issue.

The church electoral roll entitles its members to vote on church matters, attend an annual meeting and stand for election to the parochial church council.

Voting on the chimes was a breach of the parish code of conduct, investigating officer Simon Mansell concluded, although he said it was a ‘very nuanced area’.

And, he said, a reasonable person would have found the terminology used in the email unacceptable.

“We have all sent emails in haste that we have sometimes regretted,” said Mr Mansell. “But is it a potential breach of the code? I believe so.”

The exact contents of the email were not made public during the meeting of South Hams Council’s audit and governance sub-committee which considered the complaint.

Cllr Sumner told the meeting that he had been given no training on the code of conduct since becoming a councillor in November 2024.

He said the wording of his email had been taken out of context, and he had resigned from the church roll as soon as he became a councillor.

He maintained he was being ‘singled out’ and also said Mr Mansell had referred to an out-of-date code of conduct. Parish councillor Nicholas Toms suggested there was a ‘vendetta’ against Cllr Sumner.

Independent observer Trevor Kirkin told the meeting: “This has been an unfortunate escalation of routine business that has gone a little off the rails. The spirit of the code of conduct has not been followed.”

South Hams councillor Alison Nix (Con, Brixton and Wembury), who chaired the sub-committee, said there had been a breach of the code.

She told Cllr Sumner: “While we understand that you are a new councillor, we find that this is a breach. (You have) broken the code in relation to the declaration of interests.

“On the matter of treating others with respect and bringing the office of councillor into disrepute, the email was disrespectful in this matter.

“The sanction that we would like to put in place is that the whole of the parish council takes code of conduct training. If you’ve got new councillors who haven’t had the training then that is an appropriate sanction.”

The same meeting also found, after a separate report, that Cllr Sumner had not breached the code of conduct in a complaint over a planning application in Ermington. Earlier, members of the sub-committee also agreed that Kingsbridge town councillor Lorna Yabsley had not breached the code when dealing with a local resident.