When the Government set up the Standards Board for England earlier this year, it burdened it with bureaucracy. What's new?

As a result, the small Labour minority at Adur District Council has been able to hijack and undermine the legislation for party political reasons.

The legislation was aimed at fraud, corruption, bullying and expenses-fiddling by councillors on a huge scale.

That is a million miles from the circumstances of Adur Beach Residents' Association councillor Maurice Pitchford, a man of impeccable probity.

His crime was that he failed to declare a non-pecuniary interest when he spoke up for the people he represents on Shoreham Beach, where he happens to live.

The supposedly apolitical Standards Committee at Adur sat in solemn conclave and issued him with a censure. The full council later removed this stain but the Labour group cannot accept this democratic decision.

Councillor Pitchford does not deserve to be belaboured week in and week out.

But the most depressing aspect of the whole sorry story is the damage being done to the public-service ethos of the vast majority of councillors who genuinely seek to serve their local communities without fear, favour or corruption.

-Harry Treadwell, Southwick Street, Southwick