Fife Council’s leader, David Ross, has survived a motion to remove him from office.

In a packed meeting at Fife House today, attended by all councillors, the leader retained his position after the vote, with support from Reform, Lib Dem and Conservative colleagues.

A motion had been laid by SNP leader Cllr Craig Walker calling for Labour leader Cllr David Ross to stand down immediately.

A row erupted after it emerged in reports from the Courier Cllr Ross and Lochgelly Cllr Linda Erskine had been made aware of staff complaints about the disgraced sex offender, former Labour councillor for Buckhaven, David Graham, back in 2017. The now-jailed former councillor later stood again for the Labour group and was promoted to be the Council’s spokesperson for health and social care.

The SNP felt there had been a lack of safeguarding or formal action to tackle David Graham’s behaviour at the time, and that “red flags” had been ignored, leading to no confidence in the leader’s judgement.

The SNP’s motion received 34 votes and a conjoined Labour-Lib Dem amendment received 40 votes. Any motion to remove the leader requires a two-thirds majority.

In a robust and at times emotional defence of their actions, both Cllr Ross and Cllr Erskine said this had been a politically motivated attack by the SNP.

Council leader Cllr Ross said he had taken the action to speak informally to David Graham about his actions back in 2017, in agreement with the staff members involved in the complaint, and that he would “take the same action again”. He said as far as he was aware, there had been no repeat of unacceptable behaviour by David Graham towards staff members and that they had supported the actions he took at the time.

Listen to the full response from Labour’s Cllr David Ross here:

Councillor Linda Erskine also spoke in support of the leader, and you can listen to her full statement below:

Cowdenbeath area local councillors voted along party lines, with SNP councillors Robb, Bain, McLelland and Liewald supporting the motion of no confidence, and Cllrs Watt, Campbell, Erskine and Lockhart supporting the leader.

As part of the vote, the Liberal Democrats proposed a report be produced by Council officers to investigate whether there are any learnings that could be taken from how the matter was dealth with in 2017 and subsequently. This is to include costings for involving independent safeguarding oversight and options for external scrutiny of decisions and policies, which was agreed.