A council leader and officers went over the heads of councillors to remove an agenda item, an investigation has found.

Brighton and Hove City Council's scrutiny committee has been looking into why a vote on the future of 13,000 council homes was pulled from the agenda of a full council meeting at the last moment in January 2005.

The move sparked the resignation of two housing committee chairmen and a vote of no confidence in then leader Councillor Ken Bodfish.

The panel has now completed its investigation and is recommending the constitution be changed to ensure committee chairmen and group leaders are kept informed of major events and consulted before items are taken off agendas.

Scrutiny committee member and Green group leader Keith Taylor said: "They chose not to involve the democratically-elected committee chairs.

"We want to make sure the system cannot be hijacked like this in the future."

Consultation on the future of the homes has taken three years so far and cost taxpayers £300,000.

The decision had already been delayed once the previous November and in order to meet a deadline for Government funding for repairs, one had to be made quickly.

Two days before the meeting, a letter arrived from Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott's office. Senior officers believed it contained fresh information which had to be clarified before the vote or the decision could be open to a legal challenge.

But the committee reports state the officers knew chairmen Jack Hazlegrove and Kevin Allen would disagree so they went to Coun Bodfish.

Chief executive Alan McCarthy and monitoring officer Alex Bayley visited Mayor Pat Drake on the morning of the meeting and advised her to pull the item, which she did without consulting the chairmen or the other group leaders.

Couns Hazlegrove and Allen and most of the committee members had by that point seen the letter and decided it contained nothing to stop the vote going ahead. They knew nothing about the officers' activities and they and other councillors were shocked to discover what had happened at the meeting.

A vote of no confidence in Coun Bodfish was passed and Couns Hazlegrove and Allen resigned from their posts.

The scrutiny panel was set up to investigate the matter.

The panel found Coun Drake did nothing wrong but said changes to the constitution should be made to ensure that in future, group leaders and the chairs of the relevant committees were consulted before agenda items were pulled.

It also noted Coun Bodfish "showed a lack of openness" and "sidelined" the committee chairmen and recommends the leader's role be formally summarised in the constitution.

Coun Bodfish declined to comment on the report.

He told The Argus: "As I said last week, I do not comment on anything to do with Brighton and Hove City Council."